session instructions

rdkd1970

I have been having a coding problem. Went back to the books and came across this bit of information. Can anyone tell me if I should be updating my C drive

Enabling file uploads and sessions. the windows installer designates two folders in your user area as the values for upload_tmp_dir and session.save_path. However, file uploads and sessions won't work unles you create the folders yourself.

In Windows XP go to C:\Documents and Settings<username>\Local Settings\Temp.

Create a new folder called php, and inside that folder, create two subfolders called upload and session.

Is this information true as it is not set in my computer. Just need to know if this will help my session

bradgrafelman

What do you mean by "help" your session? Either sessions work or they don't.

I can, however, tell you one thing: I've never used the Windows (MSI) installer (or any of the *AMP packages), and instead always recommend/prefer to manually install PHP. Doing so removes the possibility of situations like what you're describing.

Do a [man]phpinfo/man and see what the current values of those two directives are. Do they point to valid filepaths? Are you actually having problems with uploading files and/or sessions? If so, what are they?

rdkd1970

I was hoping to have to go there with adding anything as I am never sure if I am doing the right thing. However I keep getting this message when I add data to my db.
As a newbie I am not sure what I am doing wrong I went to php.net and thought I was onto something but each day I prove to be a newbie.

I know it is something so easy but I am missing it.
:queasy:
can not get id
Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/ebermy5/public_html/login.php on line 43

this is my coding

<?php
ini_set ("display_errors", "1");
error_reporting(E_ALL);
?>
<?php
session_start();
session_id(); 
?>

<!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">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Welcome</title>
</head>

<body>
<?php
/* Program: login.php
 * Desc:	Displays the new member welcome page. Greets
 *			member by name and gives a choice to enter
 *			restricted section or go back to main page.
 */ 
include('Connections/connect_to_mysql.php'); 

$id = '';
$firstname = '';
$lastname = '';
$country = '';
$email = '';


if (isset($_SESSION['id'])) {

 $id = $_SESSION['id'];

echo "can not get id";
}

$id = mysql_real_escape_string($id);
 $result = mysql_query("SELECT id,firstname FROM `Members` WHERE $id={$_SESSION['id']}");

 while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) {
    printf("id, firstname", $row[0], $row[1]);  

}


if ($firstname == ''){ //condition, is name equal to lower case firstname notice we use == and not =
	echo "Welcome, $firstname";
} else { //so incase the condition is not as expected
	echo "Sorry you are not $firstname";
}

?>
<p>Your new Member accounts lets you enter the members only section
of our web site. You'll find special discounts, a profile of matches,
live advise from experts, and much more.</p>
<p>Your new Member ID and password were emailed to you. Store them
carefully for future use.</p>
<div style="text-align: center">
<p style="margin-top: .5in; font-weight: bold">
Glad you could join us!</p>
<form action="profile.php" method="post">
	<input type="submit"
		value="Enter the Members Only Section">
		</form>
<form action="index.php" method="post">
	<input type="submit" value="Go to eBermylove Main Page">
	</form>		
		</div>
</body>
</html>

bradgrafelman

You have a failing MySQL query, and you should know this because the error message states:

supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource

In other words, the argument you passed in - $result - apparently does not contain a MySQL resource. Looking at the manual for [man]mysql_query/man, you'll find that the only time the function won't return a result resource for a SELECT query is if the query failed to execute properly.

In other words, you should always be checking to see if [man]mysql_query/man returns boolean FALSE, indicating an error has occurred, and either output or log appropriate debugging information (such as the full SQL query itself as well as the MySQL error message returned via [man]mysql_error/man).

Here are some other comments as well:

This:
```
<?php 
ini_set ("display_errors", "1"); 
error_reporting(E_ALL); 
?> 
<?php 
session_start();
```
would cause an error if output buffering was not enabled, since you're sending output before calling [man]session_start/man.
This line:
```
session_id(); 
```
does nothing at all (and thus might as well be removed).

This code:

if (isset($_SESSION['id'])) { 

 $id = $_SESSION['id']; 

echo "can not get id"; 
}

will echo "can not get id" even though the opposite is true... ?

This:
```
$id = mysql_real_escape_string($id); 
```
is incorrect, assuming $id is expected to contain numeric data. [man]mysql_real_escape_string/man is only appropriate for string data (hence why the word is in the very name of the function); for numeric data, you should instead cast the data to the appropriate type (or use [man]sprintf/man with the appropriate placeholder, e.g. '%d').
You never bother using the $id variable (correctly, that is - see below) in your SQL query; instead you directly access the $SESSION['id'] value.
The WHERE clause of your SQL query is attempting to compare the value of the variable $id to the value of $_SESSION['id']. In other words, you shouldn't have the dollar sign in front of 'id' since I'm assuming you meant to compare values to the column 'id' in the table instead.
Any particular reason why you're retrieving the results as a numerically indexed array? I almost always use the associative arrays instead, because $row[1] doesn't really mean anything to me, but $row['firstname'] certainly does.
Is the 'id' value not a unique value in the table? If it is, and you're only expecting at most 1 row to be returned, why are you using a while loop at all?
This:
```
if ($firstname == ''){
```
will always be true since you defined $firstname to be the empty string earlier in the code and never attempted to assign a new value to that variable anywhere before that if() statement.
Speaking of that if() statement, the comment:
```
//condition, is name equal to lower case firstname notice we use == and not = 
```
is entirely false (in more ways than one). A single equal sign is an assignment operator, whereas a double equal sign is a comparison operator. The two are not interchangeable, nor does using a double equal sign change the case of text at all - that's what [man]strtolower/man is for.

rdkd1970

This is the point I want to get to knowing how to see the solution to the puzzle.

I am making the adjustments and will post when it is a success.

rdkd1970

Thisis the update changes and the error message I get is...

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/ebermy5/public_html/login.php on line 40

Warning: mysql_free_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/ebermy5/public_html/login.php on line 44
Sorry you are not

session_start();
?>
<?php
ini_set ("display_errors", "1");
error_reporting(E_ALL);
?>		
<!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">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Welcome</title>
</head>

<body>
<?php
/* Program: login.php
 * Desc:	Displays the new member welcome page. Greets
 *			member by name and gives a choice to enter
 *			restricted section or go back to main page.
 */ 
include('Connections/connect_to_mysql.php'); 

$id = '';
$firstname = '';
$lastname = '';
$country = '';
$email = '';


if (isset($_SESSION['id'])) {

 $id = $_SESSION['id'];

}


 $result = mysql_query("SELECT id,firstname FROM `Members` WHERE id=$id");

 while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) {
    printf("ID: %s  Name: %s", $row[0], $row[1]);  

}

mysql_free_result($result);
if($firstname){
	echo "Welcome, $firstname";
} else { //so incase the condition is not as expected
	echo "Sorry you are not $firstname";
}

?>
<p>Your new Member accounts lets you enter the members only section
of our web site. You'll find special discounts, a profile of matches,
live advise from experts, and much more.</p>
<p>Your new Member ID and password were emailed to you. Store them
carefully for future use.</p>
<div style="text-align: center">
<p style="margin-top: .5in; font-weight: bold">
Glad you could join us!</p>
<form action="profile.php" method="post">
	<input type="submit"
		value="Enter the Members Only Section">
		</form>
<form action="index.php" method="post">
	<input type="submit" value="Go to eBermylove Main Page">
	</form>		
		</div>
</body>
</html>

johanafm

Read brad's last post again. You still fail to follow his advice, and until you do you are very unlikely to find out what's wrong. Moreover, until you do, you are very unlikely to get any further help. If there is something you fail to understand in his post, ask about it and you are likely to get a second explanation.