Session Variables in PHP5

StevenJ

I have used dreamweaver for my sins for developing, and this has enabled me to learn some structure very quickly, however - I sense at times that the coding is lazy, and only sticks in what is necessary.

The site I am developing just now has two levels of user that can login. ADMIN and CLIENT.

At the top of each page, I have the necessary

if (!isset($_SESSION)) {
  session_start();
}

however, I have just installed PHP5 (as part of WAMP), and when I view my index page now, I get an "undefined index" error. This relates to the follwing line of code

if ($_SESSION['logged_in'] == TRUE)

now when a user first visits the site, all the session variable are going to be empty, so this index is always going to be "undefined".

I have done a search for "undefined+index+session+variable" but this hasn't really helped me here.

There is something basic that I have completely overlooked.

Is it necessary to declare all session variables BEFORE they are used? becuase in the above line of code in the index.php page, $_SESSION['logged_in'] would never be available to someone first visiting the site.

NogDog

Just add an additional check to that if condition:

if(isset($_SESSION['logged_in']) and $_SESSION['logged_in'] == TRUE) {

StevenJ

is PHP5 that pedantic?

I can see I'm going to have to look through what I have done very carefully :rolleyes:

another error I have noticed, but one based on my lazy coding, is that PHP5 doesn't like

echo date(Y)

it wanted

echo date('Y')

bradgrafelman

Which makes sense; [man]define/man allows you to define constants (just like in C++ - example: endl) which are different than strings.

Neither of these behaviors have changed from PHP4, however.

grallis

Hi StevenJ

It's proper programming to initialize all variables before using them. I don't believe your error is a difference between PHP4 and 5, but rather the error reporting level.

Undefined Index is a Warning type error. The default error reporting must be different when you installed PHP5 from you were used to before.

I recommend using both E_ALL | E_STRICT ... but that's just my opinion.

If you wish to change it, locate your php.ini file and find the \ERROR REPORTING section. It's not too far down.

Hope this helps.

NogDog

The same notice (and it's only a notice, not an error) would appear in PHP4. It's likely that in the PHP4 setting either you had a lower error_reporting setting in effect or had the display_errors setting turned off, so you simply were not seeing the notices.

Again, the notices are only that: an indication that PHP has noticed something suspicious which may or may not be a problem, so it's asking you if you're sure you meant to do that.