[RESOLVED] multipage form: session loses variables from first page

a_harvie

Hi folks,

I'm building a form over several pages. The basic structure of it is that each page submits to itself via POST, checks for errors in the form field, then if none are found saves the POST variables to the session, and then forwards to the next page.

The trouble is that the variables from the first page are lost. There seems to be two sessions - one on the first page, and one on all the others, which is why I use the

session_id() or session_start()

code at the beginning of each script, but that still seems to result in two different sessions being created.

Here's the code (minus a lot of content, but with enough to get the idea), any help would be much appreciated:

<?php

ini_set("session.gc_maxliftime","5400"); //it's a long form

session_id() or session_start();

$submitted = false;
$errors = false;


$surnameError = false;
$firstnameError = false;


if(isset($_POST['_submit_check']))
{

	$submitted = true;


	if($_POST['surname'] == "")
	{
		$surnameError = true;
	}
	if($_POST['firstname'] == "")
	{
		$firstnameError = true;
	}


	if($surnameError  || $firstnameError )
	{
		$errors = true;
	}
	else
	{

		foreach($_POST as $k => $v)
		{
			$_SESSION[$k] = $v;
		}
		session_write_close();

		/*foreach($_SESSION as $k => $v)
		{
			echo "<p>".$k." = ".$v."</p>";
		}
		*/
		$url = "http://www.exampleurl.com/phptest/form_2.php?SID=".session_id()."&";
		header("Location: ".$url);

	}

}

?>
<head>

<!-- html head stuff -->

</head>

<body>

<?
	if($errors)
		echo"<div class=\"centercontent\">
				<fieldset class=\"errorfield\">
					<p class=\"label\">There were some errors on this page. Please review the fields <span class=\"errorlabel\">specified in red.</span></p>
				</fieldset>
			</div>";

?>
<div id="content">

<form name="mainform" id="mainform" action="<? echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="_submit_check" value="1" />

<!-- PERSONAL DATA SECTION -->

<div class="sectionheader">
	Personal Data
</div>

<!-- SURNAME -->
<fieldset>
<div class="leftcontent">
	<p class="<? echo ($surnameError ? "errorlabel" : "label"); ?>">Surname:</p>
</div>
<div class="rightcontent">
	<input type="text" name="surname" <? if($submitted) echo "value=\"".$_POST['surname']."\""; else echo "value=\"fname\""; ?> />
</div>

<!-- FIRST NAME -->
<div class="leftcontent">
	<p class="<? echo ($firstnameError ? "errorlabel" : "label"); ?>">First / Middle Names:</p>
</div>
<div class="rightcontent">
	<input type="text" name="firstname" <? if($submitted) echo "value=\"".$_POST['firstname']."\""; else echo "value=\"fname\"";?> />
</div>

</fieldset>

</form>	
</div>

</body>
</html>

bogu

Maybe in here:

foreach($_POST as $k => $v) 
{ 
    $_SESSION[$k] = $v; 
}

u rewrite some of your sessions if u have the same elements name in your forms for different pages...

So u should probably create the session something like this:
- On the first page u have

foreach($_POST as $k => $v) 
{ 
    $_SESSION['first_page'][$k] = $v; 
}

- On the second page u have

foreach($_POST as $k => $v) 
{ 
    $_SESSION['second_page'][$k] = $v; 
}

and so on ...

When u hit the next and back button to extract the values from the session on that page u parse the values from that page session ...

if (!empty($_SESSION['second_page'])) {
	foreach($_SESSION['second_page'] as $k => $v) 
	{ 
	   $$k = $v; 
	}
}

a_harvie

Thanks for the advice. I'm certain that no variables are being overwritten - there's nothing with the same names on the other pages, and I could see that it was creating multiple session cookies. I've replaced the session initialization code with the following, which seems to do the trick:

        if(isset($_GET['SID']))
	{
		session_id($_GET['SID']);
	}
	session_start();

Since the session ID is getting passed in the url, this works. It's not the most elegant solution though. (Using GET,POST and SESSION just seems messy to me.)

The tip about using a two dimensional array will make it easier to organize though, thanks for that.