variables within sessions?

TimTimTimma

I just want to ask a pretty basic question...

1 - does

session_start();

HAVE to go to the very top as many people ive spoken with made it out to be?

I was also wanting to know if this would correctly be read by php, and is it even parsable

<?php

$Variable_Name = $_SESSION[$array['identifier']];

?>

or would I need to do this?

<?php

$_SESSION['Variable_Name'] = $array['identifier'];
$Variable_Name = $_SESSION['Variable_Name'];

?>

I am hoping for the first one.

The reason I am asking is because I have 15 site settings that get pulled on everypage to make sure everything it set correctly, or set to what the user wishes. However 15+ queries all the time is abit insuffiecent I believe, and would like to execute the sessions as best as possible. here is the code I plan to convert to sessions

<?php

$Settings = $MySQL->Fetch("SELECT * FROM ".$pre."settings"); 
$Site_Title = $Settings['site_title']; 
$Site_Slogan = $Settings['site_slogan']; 
$Site_Description = $Settings['site_description']; 
$Site_Keywords = $Settings['site_keywords']; 
$Admin_Email = $Settings['admin_email']; 
$Site_Theme = $Settings['site_theme'];
$Site_Frontpage = $Settings['site_frontpage'];
$Site_Frontpage_Content = $Settings['site_frontpage_content'];
$Guest_Allowed = $Settings['guest_allowed'];
$Site_Lang = $Settings['site_lang'];
$Censor_Words = $Settings['censor_words'];
$Footer1 = $Settings['footer1'];
$Footer2 = $Settings['footer2'];
$PoweredBy = $Settings['poweredby'];
$Security_Login = $Settings['secure_login'];
$base_url = $Settings['base_url'];
$Emoticon_On = $Settings['emoticon_on'];

?>

Installer

No, you don't have to put "session_start" at the very top. But you do have to call it before anything is output by the server. That's why people recommend putting it at the top. There are plenty of threads on the subject that no doubt would show up in a search.

For the second question; why not just do this:

$Settings = $MySQL->Fetch("SELECT * FROM ".$pre."settings");
$_SESSION = $Settings;

(You might want to do some error-checking somewhere, of course, like checking the array count, etc.)

TimTimTimma

I didn't think of that, or think that would work...wow, thx! saves me loads of trouble!

Weedpacket

Originally posted by TimTimTimma
I didn't think of that, or think that would work...wow, thx! saves me loads of trouble!

Be warned that that method will trash any other session variables you might be trying to keep. I expect that's what you want, but if you add other variables later it may be a problem.

One convenient way of storing those settings in the session while keeping others would be to store them as an array

$Settings = $Mysq....
$_SESSION['Settings'] = $Settings;

And then you'd have session variables $SESSION['Settings']['site_title'], $SESSION['Settings']['site_slogan'], etc.

Installer

Yes, "$_SESSION['Settings']" is what it should be. Sorry; my code was sloppy.