[RESOLVED] Serialize / Unserialize (Confused!!!)

yoki

Ok I have a form separated into 4 different php pages.

On page 1, user fills in 3 fields called "Title", "Topic", "Presentation_Type". Once he clicks on continue, there is a self validation of the fields. If everything is ok, then it's redirected to the second page and so on for the other pages.

Here is part of the code:

if ($_POST['process'] == 1) { $results=check();

if ($results['Title']!='') {
session_start();
$SESSION['POST_VARS'] = base64_encode(serialize($POST));session_write_close();
header("location: abstract_page_2.php");
exit();
}
}

Now on my second page 'abstract_page_2.php' my code starts with

session_start();
$POST = unserialize(base64_decode($SESSION['POST_VARS']));

If I add the following line:

echo stripslashes($_POST['Title']);

it outputs the entered title properly.

Now If I want to redirect this value to a temporary variable like this

$Entered_Title = $_POST['Title']);

$Entered_Title will be empty.

Now I'm thinking that this might be an unserialize problem...What do you think? 😕 Please help!

Weedpacket

Why are you base64 encoding and serializing it in the first place? Why not just go

$_SESSION['POST_VARS'] = $_POST;

? PHP will do the serialization itself and the encoding is simply unnecessary.

yoki

Hey weedpacket! Thanks for the quick reply 🙂

Humm someone in this forum suggested me to do a serialize...I guess it's not the right way of doing it. OK I will try out what you suggest.

One thing I'm not sure how to do...Say I wanna access the value of Title on my second page, how would I do it? And how I can store it in a new variable?

yoki

So basically my code on page 1 should look like this right?

if ($results['Title']!='') {
session_start();
$SESSION['POST_VARS'] = $POST;
session_write_close(); header("location: abstract_page_2.php");
exit();
}
}

DO I still need to do a session_write_close()?

Weedpacket

session_write_close()? Personally I've never used it; I let that happen automatically at the end of the script (which in your example code is the at the exit() statement).

To answer your other question, $_SESSION['POST_VARS']['Title']

yoki

so $Title_Entered = $_SESSION['POST_VARS']['Title']

echo $Title_Entered will output it correctly?

Weedpacket

Have you tried it? 🙂

yoki

Hey Weedpacket! How's it going?

Yes and IT WORKED GREAT! 🙂 I owe you BIG! Thanks again! Sorry for the delay in responding!

No more problems retrieving my passed variables. It even fixed another display problem I had.