If, else and $_SESSION vars

[dcjones]

Hi all

I just can't get my head around this problem.

I have a if statement which should look for the value of a SESSION variable, depending on the content of the variable echo a statement.

My SESSION var is "$SESSION['product_id']" and my IF ELSE statement is:

<?php if ($_SESSION['product_id'] = 1) {
echo; ?>
<a href="staff_view.php" target="_self">VIEW STAFF MEMBERS </a>
 <? } else { 
echo "";
}
?>

If I look at the content of all my SESSION var "product_id" holds "17" but the first IF statement is displayed.

If I use "print_r($_SESSION); " at the start of my script my SESSION vars (part list) are shown as :

[member_id] => 1338022 [product_id] => 17 [begin_date] => 2007-06-12

Can anyone see what is going on.

[ShawnK]

Well your code is a little off, you have an empty echo statement. You don't need to echo, when you escape php, html takes care of that. Plus you don't need an ELSE statement if your doing nothing. You can just put an IF.

here:

<?php 
if ($_SESSION['product_id'] = 1) 
{ 
echo "<a href='staff_view.php' target='_self'>VIEW STAFF MEMBERS </a>";
} 

or you can escape php.

<?php 
if ($_SESSION['product_id'] = 1) 
{ 
?>
<a href='staff_view.php' target='_self'>VIEW STAFF MEMBERS </a>";
<?php 
} 
?>

[Weedpacket]

There is also a bit of a typo in this line:

if ($_SESSION['product_id'] = 1) 

You're setting $_SESSION['product_id'] to 1 and then looking to see if it's nonzero - which it is, so the test succeeds. You want

if ($_SESSION['product_id'] == 1) 

and a way to avoid that sort of mistake causing bugs like this is to write

if (1 == $_SESSION['product_id']) 

instead, which won't compile if the same typo is committed.