[RESOLVED] "Passing variables with Sessions"

eurozaf

Hello to all,

I have a book at my hands called:
"Beginning
PHP5, APACHE, MySQL
Web Development"
in which it is mentioned that, if the readers are in need of help, they could look for it at this forum (and especially at this Echo Lounge) and that if they were lucky enough, they might find one of the authors of the book that i mentioned above.
That's the reason why i dare enter at this lounge rather than stay at the "newbies" place to ask there my totally newbie question.

Here is my question:
In my effort to learn php from the beginning, i started trying out all the codes it's written in the book, untill i stack at the "Passing variables with Sessions" topic where there are 2 example codes, the following:

code 1 (movie1.php):
(giving values to the $_SESSION['var'])

<?php
session_start();
$_SESSION['username'] = "Joe12345";
$_SESSION['authuser'] = 1;
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Find my Favorite Movie!</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
$myfavmovie = urlencode("Life of Brian");
echo "<a href='moviesite.php?favmovie=$myfavmovie'>";
echo "Click here to see information about my favorite movie!";
echo "</a>";
?>
</body>
</html>

and
code 2 (moviesite.php):
(retrieving values from $_SESSION['var'])

<?php
session_start();

//check to see if user has logged in with a valid password
if ($_SESSION['authuser'] != 1) {
  echo "Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page.";
  exit();
}
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>My Movie Site - <?php echo $_REQUEST['favmovie']; ?></title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
echo "Welcome to our site, ";
echo $_SESSION['username'];
echo "! <br>";
echo "My favorite movie is ";
echo $_REQUEST['favmovie'];
echo "<br>";
$movierate = 5;
echo "My movie rating for this movie is: ";
echo $movierate;
?>
</body>
</html>

The problem is that i can't retrieve the values of $SESSION['username'] and $SESSION['authuser']. They appear to be empty (or null), so at the output of the second page i get the message:
Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page.

instead of the:
Welcome to our site, Joe12345!
My favorite movie is Life of Brian
My movie rating for this movie is: 5

Also, when i changed the condition of the if statement to be:

if ($_SESSION['authuser'] != null) {
  echo "Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page.";
  exit();
}

i didn't get the message:
Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page.

but the following:
Welcome to our site, !
My favorite movie is Life of Brian
My movie rating for this movie is: 5
which means that the two variables ($SESSION['authuser'] and $SESSION['username']) are null.

What should i do?

Please help me.
Thank you.

NogDog

Welcome to the forums, Eurozaf. I moved this to the "Newbies" forum, as that is where it really belongs regardless of what the book's author might have seemed to suggest.

You can help those of us who will try to debug your code by wrapping your code samples in [ php] and [ /php] tags (without the spaces I used here). This will make your code much easier to read, including color-coded syntax highlighting. Just click the "Edit" button at the bottom right of your post in order to do so.

eurozaf

I knew i was going too far. 🙂
Sorry, i didn't want to disturb you on this.
Thanks for the tip.

NogDog

I could not see anything obviously wrong, so I copied-and-pasted your code and ran it on my PC, where it seemed to work OK.

The first thing that therefore comes to mind is to make sure that your browser's security settings are not rejecting cookies, as PHP sessions normally use cookies to store/retrieve the session ID.

eurozaf

NogDog wrote:
...to make sure that your browser's security settings are not rejecting cookies...

I have WinXP.
Where should i go and check?
And if the cookies are being rejected, what should i do?
Is it necessary to upload my phpinfo for anyone who would be so kind to help me?

Thanks for your help.

P.S.: I have the phpinfo.php file, but i don't know how to upload it.

NogDog

If running IE7, from the menu select Tools -> Internet Options. In the Internet Options window, click the Privacy tab. If the security setting is "High", try reducing it to "Medium" and see if that has any effect.

eurozaf

I have IE6.
The security setting level was already at "Medium". I reduced it temporarily to "Accept all cookies", but the variables remain empty.

bradgrafelman

Is your server accessible by the public? If so, could you PM me a link so I can take a look at these scripts?

NogDog

If you'd like to show us your current session settings, you could run the following script, the copy-and-paste the output here:

<pre>
<?php
$sessionStuff = array(
'session.auto_start',
'session.bug_compat_42',
'session.bug_compat_warn',
'session.cache_expire',
'session.cache_limiter',
'session.cookie_domain',
'session.cookie_httponly',
'session.cookie_lifetime',
'session.cookie_path',
'session.cookie_secure',
'session.entropy_file',
'session.entropy_length',
'session.gc_divisor',
'session.gc_maxlifetime',
'session.gc_probability',
'session.hash_bits_per_character',
'session.hash_function',
'session.name',
'session.referer_check',
'session.save_handler',
'session.save_path',
'session.serialize_handler',
'session.use_cookies',
'session.use_only_cookies',
'session.use_trans_sid'
);
foreach($sessionStuff as $val)
{
   printf("% -32s %s\n", $val, ini_get($val));
}
?>
</pre>

eurozaf

Unfortunately, the public cannot access my server. (It's not even connected to a LAN. It's totally a PC.)

[INDENT]My current session settings:[/INDENT]

session.auto_start               0
session.bug_compat_42            1
session.bug_compat_warn          1
session.cache_expire             180
session.cache_limiter            nocache
session.cookie_domain            

session.cookie_httponly          

session.cookie_lifetime          0
session.cookie_path              /
session.cookie_secure            

session.entropy_file             

session.entropy_length           0
session.gc_divisor               100
session.gc_maxlifetime           1440
session.gc_probability           1
session.hash_bits_per_character  4
session.hash_function            0
session.name                     PHPSESSID
session.referer_check            

session.save_handler             files
session.save_path                C:\php\sess\tmp
session.serialize_handler        php
session.use_cookies              1
session.use_only_cookies         0
session.use_trans_sid            0

session.save_path C:\php\sess\tmp. The path exists and - after continuous testing of the code - contains some files which look like this: sess_1d8f25637274t321f56g677gdvs43257 all of them empty.

NogDog

Hmmm....it seems like it's practically working, as it is creating the session files but seemingly not saving data in them.

The only difference in your configuration settings from mine is that mine use forward slashes ("/") in the session.save_path setting instead of back-slashes. It seems that if this were an issue, then you would not even get the empty session files, though. If no one else can spot what the problem is, I suppose you could try changing that setting so that it uses forward slashes, just in case by some strange chance that has an effect.

Other than that, all I can think of is to add the following lines to the start of each page to make sure any and all run-time errors/warnings/notices are being displayed:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

PS: If none of that helps, probably my next step would be to re-install PHP. 🙁

eurozaf

"Error handling and logging"
In my php.ini file i 've changed error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE to error_reporting = E_ALL and confirmed that display_errors = On.
So when i tested movie1.php and moviesite.php (the 2 codes i showed at my first post), i got this output:
"Notice: Undefined index: authuser in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\test\048_moviesite.php on line 5
Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page."

Also, when i changed the condition of the if statement to be:

if ($_SESSION['authuser'] != null) { 
  echo "Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page."; 
  exit(); 
}

i got this output:

Notice: Undefined index: authuser in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\test\048_moviesite.php on line 5
Welcome to our site,
Notice: Undefined index: username in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\test\048_moviesite.php on line 17
!
My favorite movie is Life of Brian
My movie rating for this movie is: 5

NogDog

That's just telling us what we already knew: the session variable is not set. However, it does illustrate that a better way to write that check is:

if (empty($_SESSION['authuser']) or $_SESSION['authuser'] != 1) {

eurozaf

So, the only thing that is left to do is reinstall php?

By the way NogDog, could you tell me why when i try to send private message to BunkerMaster and Stolzyboy (apart), each time i received this message:

"eurozaf, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1.Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2.If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation."

My account is enabled and activated, so i need privileges to send a PM to someone who is moderator and/or higher? If so, how could i get them to contact with these people? please help.

stolzyboy

are you able to echo out the session variables on the first page where they are set?

NogDog

stolzyboy wrote:
are you able to echo out the session variables on the first page where they are set?

Perhaps this one-file test would be useful:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
session_start();
$_SESSION['test'] = "This is a test.";
$before = "<p>Before: " . $_SESSION['test'] . "</p>\n";
session_write_close();
unset($_SESSION);
session_start();
echo $before;
echo "<p>After: " . $_SESSION['test'] . "</p>\n";
?>

It should output:

Before: This is a test.

After: This is a test.

As far as the PM problem, afraid I don't know -- perhaps there's a minimum number of posts required before it's activated? I'll ask in the moderators' forum and see if anyone knows.

dalecosp

<?php
echo session_id();
print_r($_SESSION);
exit;
?>

Between the fact that his session vars are empty, and he can't log in to the forum, whoever asked about his cookie settings was most likely right on target.

OP, add both "phpbuilder.com" and "whateveryourlocalhostnameyouaretestingon" to your allowed sites, unset "https only" or whatever they call that, and try again.

eurozaf

NogDog,
i ran the script you suggested to me and the output was correct:

Before: This is a test.

After: This is a test.

Dalescop,
I went to: Tools -> Internet Options... -> Privacy -> Locations...
I wrote phpbuilder.com and pressed "Allow".
But when i wrote there "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\test" or "localhost" i got an error message.
Also, i don't know how to unset the "https only" and what to do with this:

<?php 
echo session_id(); 
print_r($_SESSION); 
exit; 
?>

NogDog

That result indicates to me that session data can be stored and retrieved OK.

Try starting out both of your files with the following to see if we can detect any errors, such as headers already sent prior to the session_start() commands:

<?php
// make sure there are no spaces or blank lines before the opening php tag
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
session_start();
if(session_id() == '')
{
   echo "No session id created!!!";
   exit;
}
// rest of script . . .

eurozaf

I started out both of my files with this code you showed me, but the same as before.
The output i get is:

Notice: Undefined index: authuser in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\test\048_moviesite.php on line 13
Sorry, but you don't have permission to view this page.

Only the line (13 instead of 5) that the notice indicates is changed, as it was expected.