Loosing session variable?

cgchris99

I have a website that has a login procedure. It seems to work fine except after a certain amount of time. About 1 minute or so it looses the session value?

I seem to only have this in IE6 but Firefox doesn't loose the session value and works fine.

I have checked the phpinfo and it looks fine. I also was told it could be P3P related so I have started code for this and think I have it right but still loose the session in IE6.

Any other ideas?

Thanks

jami3

have you made sure at the start of your pages after the session has been started you have
<?php session_start(); ?>
otherwise the session will be discarded i belive.

cgchris99

I have some includes in my php file that may not have the session_start in them but every other file that gets called has it.
I wasn't sure that an included file would need it.

Basically there is
login.php
menu.php
insert.php
edit.php
delete.php
thankyou.php

each of these have session_start() as the first line.
login jumps to menu

menu -> insert
insert -> thankyou and back to insert or menu

It's pretty simple. this is why I can't figure out why the session is either expiring or loosing the value.

any other ideas?

Kudose

You only need to start the session once. Call it at the top of every page, or if you're using includes, once in your "header" file.

Maybe restarting the session with every include is the problem. Dunno though...

cgchris99

Every tutorial on the web about sessions says that every file must have session_start() at the top.

That said, I think I know what is causing it but I can't figure out how to fix it.

There is a known problem with using
header( "location: /thankyou.php"); redirection and retaining the session value.

does anyone have a work around for this?
I have tried the following
session_write_close();
header( "location: /thankyou.php");
exit;

but this doesn't seem to help.

Kudose

Um....

Put session_start() at the top of include.php

Put session_start() at the top of index.php and require include.php

From the manual:

 As of PHP 4.3.3, calling session_start() while the session has already been started will result in an error of level E_NOTICE...

That was my point.

Luckily for you:

...Also, the second session start will simply be ignored.

So that's obviously not your problem, but my point still remains valid. You only need to start the session once.

cgchris99

Here's what I had to do to make it work
It's not pretty but this code worked.

This is the redirect in login.php
header("Location: newpage.php?PHPSESSID=".session__id());

Then in newpage.php the code looks like this
<?php
session_id($_GET['PHPSESSID']);
session_start();

Anyone have a better idea? Security is also an issue but it's not a real big deal for this page.