HELP with SQL quried session

[kenay]

ok guys and girls so ive been working on a project for school all day today and the one thing thats is giving me major dramas is a session variable to display a customers name.

basically a customer logs in for access to the site by using there email and password, then on the next page i want to store their name as a variable,
but in order to do that i must first make a quiry to the server

<?php
	$colname_rsName = "-1";
if (isset($_SESSION['MM_Username'])) {
  $colname_rsName = $_SESSION['MM_Username'];
}
mysql_select_db($database_sim5, $sim5);
$query_rsName = sprintf("SELECT custName FROM customer WHERE email = %s", GetSQLValueString($colname_rsName, "text"));
$rsName = mysql_query($query_rsName, $sim5) or die(mysql_error());
$row_rsName = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsName);
$totalRows_rsName = mysql_num_rows($rsName);
$_SESSION['Name'] = $row_rsName['custName'];
//Store txtLogEmail into a query then back into a Session

?>

rsName is my record set.

as you can see i have tried setting the variable

$_SESSION['Name'] = $row_rsName['custName'];

so with all that done i then move onto making that a set session

<?php
	session_start();
	$_SESSION['Name'];
	?>

but its not displaying on any other pages when i

<?php echo $_SESSION['Name']; ?>

if someone could help me that would be awesome

also let me know if more info is needed

[johanafm]

You must always use session_start before setting any session variables.
So, when the user logs in

session_start();
# check credentials against database and then...
$_SESSION['Name'] = $username;

Then on every subsequent request

session_start();
echo 'Hello ' . $_SESSION['Name'];

[kenay]

thanks johanafm,
i understand what you are saying so if i changed the code to this

<?php
    $colname_rsName = "-1";
if (isset($_SESSION['MM_Username'])) {
  $colname_rsName = $_SESSION['MM_Username'];
}
mysql_select_db($database_sim5, $sim5);
$query_rsName = sprintf("SELECT custName FROM customer WHERE email = %s", GetSQLValueString($colname_rsName, "text"));
$rsName = mysql_query($query_rsName, $sim5) or die(mysql_error());
$row_rsName = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsName);
$totalRows_rsName = mysql_num_rows($rsName);
session_start();
$_SESSION['Name'] = $row_rsName['custName'];
//Store txtLogEmail into a query then back into a Session

?> 

it should work?

[bradgrafelman]

You must call [man]session_start/man before you work with any session values. In the code snippet above, you did not do this.