Confused between "Sessions and $_POST"

siabanie

Can someone help me to explain what is the different between $_POST and using $SESSION?

Please correct me if Im wrong - As far as I understand that:

$_POST function is used to collect values from a form sent with method = "post" and it is invisiable to other.

$_SESSION variables is used to store information about or change setting and also hold information about one single user and available to all pages in one application.

When I using sessions as a confirmation page it does not seem to be loaded but it redirect to the main page. For example: user modify the detials or even create a new user data then when the user click the button submit it should go to the confirmation page before proceed to the main page but this did not happen. Can anyone explain to me what went wrong? Is that because I did not send the form or something missing?

Thanks.

dagon

your general definitions are correct, we would need to see some code to help you on your specific issue.

bradgrafelman

siabanie wrote:
$POST function is used to collect values from a form sent with method = "post" and it is invisiable to other.

Mostly correct, although $POST is not a function, it is a variable (an array, to be precise). I'm not quite sure what you mean by "it is invisiable[sic] to other" though... ?

siabanie wrote:
$SESSION variables is used to store information about or change setting and also hold information about one single user and available to all pages in one application.

Again mostly correct, although I would simply say that $SESSION is an array that holds persistent data from one request to another. It uniquely identifiers users based on the SID (which is commonly passed by the user on every request through the use of a cookie or as a part of the query string).

As for specific instances of problems, dagon is right - you should show us some actual code examples where you're having these issues.

joomlads07

$POST and $GET can contain submitted form variables. They are set on the client (i.e. the browser) and submitted to the user. Although you could use them to pass information between pages, they are inherently insecure, as the user can alter/modify them, so their data can not be relied on.

$_SESSION contains session data. They are set and stored on the server. On the client a cookie with the session_id is stored, but the actual content is not visible, nor editable to the user. For passing things between pages SESSION is a lot better, although it usually requires cookies (it is possible to transfer the session id in the url instead of using cookies)