Sessions help

n4ows

I am working on a project and having trouble hanging on to the session variable.

<?PHP 
session_start();  

....

$_SESSION['staffname'] = $nameIN;
echo "'staffname': ".$_SESSION['staffname']."<br />name: $nameIN<br />";
include("$server/inc/headerAdmin.php");
include("$server/admin/mainselect.php");
?>

the echo works here, displaying the name both in the session variable and the set variable. But when I get to mainselect.php, all this information is gone:

<!-- START mainselect.php -->
<p>staffname: <?=$_SESSION['staffname']?><br />name: <?=$nameIN?></p>
<br />
<div align="center">
   <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
      <tr>
         <td align="center">
            <form action="mls.php" method="post" name="navgo">
               <fieldset>
                  <legend class="txtMR16bL">Welcome <?=$nameIN?></legend>
...

Can anyone explain why this is happening?

Piranha

First, when using sessions you should start with "session_start();", otherwise it won't work.

Second, don't use <?= $varname ?>. Use <?php echo $varname; ?> instead. The reason is that <?= won't work in future releases of PHP.

n4ows

Hummm...

Well, if I put a session_start(); at the top of mainselect.php, then the whole thing blows up because I already started a session at the top of the script. mainselect.php is only a bit of html that I use in several places and is added as an include. The script is called logon.php and I didn't include the whole script, just the relevant parts.

I'm thinking about storing the sessions in MySQL anyway. I need to learn how to do this and since this is giving major headaches, no better time to learn like the present.

I've been coding PHP for about 6 or 7 years, but don't use sessions very often. I copied this code from something I wrote maybe 5 years ago, so it may have something to do with a difference in versions and a difference in servers.

n4ows

But I did make the other change you suggested and it didn't make a difference. However, if I just ignore that I can't display the session variable, then make a selection and go to the next page, then I'm able to display the session variable. The problem lies in going to the include file, mainselect.php. I just don't under stand why neither the session variable or the set variable is not available when I enter mainselect.php.

n4ows

I did a search and found that, though I had used the html in more than one place in the original use, I was only using it in this one place, so I just copied it into where the include was. Problem solved.