Problem with sessions

Aden1

After hours of trying to sort out my problem I am thinking that it is perhaps not my coding but some setting that needs attention. But being quite new to PHP I have no idea what it might be.

I have been working on some code requiring sessions. I have set the sessions on each page of coding as I understand is required but the information is not being passed from one page to the other.

So I went back and tested a simple exercise that I did at college which I know worked on the college computer and found the same problem.

The exercise that is not working is:

<?php
session_start();
$username = $SESSION['username'];
$userid = $SESSION['userid'];
echo "<h1>Your session ID is ".session_id()."</h1>";
echo "<h2>The Session variable called username has a value of $username</h2>";
echo "<h2>The Session variable called userid has a value of $userid</h2>";
?>

I get the following result:

Notice: Undefined index: username in C:\xampp\htdocs\sss11_eg1b.php on line 3

Notice: Undefined index: userid in C:\xampp\htdocs\sss11_eg1b.php on line 4
Your session ID is lehd6n7ku6o4g8op1tclrl4uv3
The Session variable called username has a value of
The Session variable called userid has a value of

This is exactly what is happening with the code I have been working on.

Please can anyone point me in the direction of what the problem might be and if it is some sort of setting could you spell it out in simple language as I am quite inexperienced with that sort of thing.

Thank you

NogDog

Where are you assigning values to the $_SESSION array variables you are using?

Aden1

This is where my lack of experience will show: I thought I was assigning a value by $username = $_SESSION['username']; and the same with userid.

If that isn't what I am doing how do I go about doing that please?

Thank you

Aden1

Sorry Nog Dog - I omitted the first part of the exercise which was:

<?php
session_start();
$SESSION['username'] = "Sam";
$SESSION['userid'] = "123";
echo "<h1>Your session ID is ".session_id()."</h1>";

echo"<h2>Session variables have been set.</h2>";

echo"<a href='sss11_eg1b.php'>Link to another page</a>";
?>

But when I click on the link to "sss11_eg1.php" the username and userid have no content. I get the same response as indicated above i.e no username and no content.

Thanks again.

bradgrafelman

I see that the session ID is being outputted on both pages. Do they match?

Aden1

Hi bradgrafelman,

No! They don't match. What is that telling me please?

bradgrafelman

That's telling you that PHP didn't receive the session ID on the second page load, and thus didn't realize that there was a previous session. Therefore, a new session was created.

Can you show us the value of all of the PHP directives that begin with 'session.' ? Best way to grab their current values is to do a [man]phpinfo/man and look for the 'session' table.

Aden1

Following are the values from phpinfo() - if I need to change an ini file about which I often see references, could you tell me where to find it please?

session
Session Support enabled
Registered save handlers files user sqlite
Registered serializer handlers php php_binary wddx

Directive Local Value Master Value
session.auto_start Off Off
session.bug_compat_42 On On
session.bug_compat_warn On On
session.cache_expire 180 180
session.cache_limiter nocache nocache
session.cookie_domain no value no value
session.cookie_httponly Off Off
session.cookie_lifetime 0 0
session.cookie_path / /
session.cookie_secure Off Off
session.entropy_file no value no value
session.entropy_length 0 0
session.gc_divisor 100 100
session.gc_maxlifetime 1440 1440
session.gc_probability 1 1
session.hash_bits_per_character 5 5
session.hash_function 0 0
session.name PHPSESSID PHPSESSID
session.referer_check no value no value
session.save_handler files files
session.save_path C:\xampp\tmp C:\xampp\tmp
session.serialize_handler php php
session.use_cookies On On
session.use_only_cookies Off Off
session.use_trans_sid 0 0