Baffled by session strangness

ts10

Hi - I've been programming with PHP for probably 8 years. I took off a year doing other things now I'm back and using PHP5 for the first time. Maybe something's changed but I am baffled by this issue I'm having unless I've just forgotten totally what I'm doing!

Connected to mysql:

<?php
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM territory WHERE territory_webname = 'publisher'") or die(mysql_error());
while ($pubInfo = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
		$_SESSION['pubInfo'] = $pubInfo;
		echo $_SESSION[pubInfo]["territory_name"];

}
?>

<?php echo $_SESSION[pubInfo]["territory_name"]; ?>

As long as I'm in the While statment the echo prints fine. Once I'm out it's lost. What have a done wrong?!? I've been going over this for almost 2 days now and am just baffled.

Thanks!

bogu

Where do you initialize session data? if you want to use sessions and not just a simple array...
[man]session_start[/man]

You should also try [man]print_r[/man] your $_SESSION array to see how it look like ...

And last but not least you could take a look at this thread to refresh your memory ...
http://phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?t=10245251

Weedpacket

Just to clarify; you want to echo all the territory_name values, and then echo the last territory_name value again?

(And it's $SESSION['pubInfo'], not $SESSION[pubInfo]; recommend that you open php.ini and set the error reporting level to E_ALL - it may pull you up on some practices that have been obsoleted since the days of PHP 3.)

ts10

session_start(); is the first line on my page...

Also, I used PHP4 so I'm not sure how different that is. What happens is there will only be on row in the DB that matches the query so I'm echoing it inside the while to show it works and outside the while to show that it no longer works.

What could cause this?

Thanks!

ts10

Ok, I just noticed something - maybe this helps it make more sense...

When I first go to the site it works! Then, if I refresh the page, all the session data disappears.

One other note: if the session variable is set OUTSIDE the while() the session data works even after refresh. Only if set inside the while does it not.

I just have no clue....

ts10

Here is my entire file, start to finish. How could it be that the first print_r works yet the second doesn't?

<?php session_start();?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<?php
mysql_connect("localhost", "tidbitsnet", "sckmtb109") or die(mysql_error());  

mysql_select_db("tidbitsnet_publishers") or die(mysql_error());
$admin = 1;
?>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Publisher Template</title>
<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="openwysiwyg/wysiwyg.js"></script>
</head>

<body> 
<? 
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM territory WHERE territory_webname = 'publisher'") or die(mysql_error());
while ($pubInfo = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
		$_SESSION['pubInfo'] = $pubInfo;
		print_r($_SESSION['pubInfo']);
		//session_register('$pubInfo');
		//echo $_SESSION[pubInfo]["territory_name"];
    //echo $pubInfo["territory_name"] . "<br>";
    //echo $pubInfo["territory_phone"] . "<br>";
}
print_r($_SESSION['pubInfo']);
?>
</body>
</html>

Weedpacket

ts10 wrote:
Also, I used PHP4 so I'm not sure how different that is.

I was programming in PHP eight years ago, and I remember PHP 4's release and how it coincided with our company's breaking up for Christmas 2000. That's why I thought you meant PHP 3.

ts10 wrote:
What happens is there will only be on row in the DB that matches the query

Then you don't need a loop.

How could it be that the first print_r works yet the second doesn't?

Now that I don't know; unless you're managing to trigger a PHP bug that has never affected anyone else (unlikely, in such a simple program), both of those print_r() statements should produce the same result. Since this is happening on one page, the session is irrelevant. Even if you are storing the data in the session (have you checked the directory where your session data is being stored to see?) when you refresh will be replacing it with the results of running the query again.