Passing PHP session to asp shopping cart

bunner_bob

I've got a php ecommerce site that stores (in a session) product_id => quantity pairs as a shopping cart. Someone else is building a shopping cart/checkout system in asp (actually aspx - not sure what the difference is). I need to be able to pass the php session cart to asp for checkout.

I understand a php session is kind of its own thing, not readable by asp.

I read about doing this via a form - submitting my pairs as hidden form fields via get or post. Wondering if there's a way instead to have asp grab a cookie. I could cookie the cart on the php side, and have asp pick it up.

Is that something that'd work? Of course the user would need cookies enabled...maybe the form approach is better.

Advice?

etully

Either way will work. Personally, I would build a PHP script that outputs the cart contents (maybe as XML or CSV) and then pass the session ID to the asp(x) script. The asp(x) script could call that PHP script behind the scenes and ask for the cart contents for that session ID and the PHP script would pass back the XML / CSV response.

My personal preference is to put the least burden on the forms since there are maximum sizes that GET and POST can transmit. Why put all the data in the customer's browser only to ask for it back? And from a security standpoint, why put data in a place where the user could modifiy it and then trust that it gets returned unedited. Obviously, the security issue isn't really a problem in your case (because what's the worst that could happen, the customer changes what they want to buy?) but it's always a good idea to get into good programming habits so that when it IS a security issue, you'll already know the right way to do it.