Error... Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache

cocco

Hello,

I am getting this header error and can't figure out how to correct it,

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /home/content/folder/main.php:12) in /home/content/folder/top_line.php on line 5

Here is my code...

<?php

require_once 'config.php';

if (!session_id()) session_start();
if (empty($_SESSION['user_id'])) { ?>

<tr>
<td id="user_menu">
<div class="minilogin">
<form action="<?php echo $site_base; ?>/login.php"

method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="submit" value="Login"

/>
<label for="user_login">Login:</label>
<input id="user_login" name="login" size="30"

type="text" />
<label for="user_password">Password:</label>
<input id="user_password" name="password"

size="30" type="password" />&nbsp;
<button name="commit" type="submit"

value="Login">Login</button>
No account? Register FREE <a href="<?php echo

$site_base; ?>/signup.php">here</a>
</form>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<?php } else { ?>
<tr>
<td id="user_menu">
<div class="minilogin">
Welcome <?php echo

htmlspecialchars($_SESSION['username']); ?> |
<a href="<?php echo $site_base; ?>/my_account.php">My

Account</a> |
<a href="<?php echo $site_base; ?>/logout.php">Logout</a>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<?php }

Please advise...
Thanks

bpat1434

As the error states, you're sending something to the browser in main.php on line 12 which is done before top_line.php executes the session_start() call.

So what is the contents of main.php?

cocco

Here is the main.php code....

<?php

require_once 'config.php';
require_once 'inc/db_connect.php';

?>

<!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" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

<head>
	<title><?php echo $site_name; ?></title>
	<link href="<?php echo $css_base; ?>/review.css" media="screen" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

<body>

<!-- Main body table -->
<table summary="Width limiting table" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">

<!-- User login form -->
<tbody>
<?php require 'top_line.php'; ?>

<!-- BEGIN Content -->

<!-- END Content -->

<!-- Copyright header -->
<?php require 'inc/footer.php'; ?></tbody>
</table>

</body>
</html>

<?php

require_once 'inc/db_end.php';

?>

Thank You

bpat1434

Right... so read the error message again, and put 2 and 2 together..

The error states that there is output in main.php which means all the headers for the page are already sent. So when you include top_line.php, you can't use any function that requires headers to not be sent yet.

The error is self explanatory. You can't send anything (whitespace, html, plaintext) to the browser before a session_start() call.

The easiest way to do this is to take the HTML and put it into a variable, then when everything is done, echo that variable, rather than echoing the HTML as you go.

bradgrafelman

cocco wrote:
Here is the main.php code

Erm... thanks? :p

bpat already told you what the problem was (we didn't even need to see the code for main.php); you can't have an include file that calls on session_start() for the first time in a script after you've already outputted some HTML.

Move the session_start() to the top of the calling script before you output any data.

EDIT: Looks like bpat was a bit quicker on the draw than I was...