why doesn't this work

[Anon]

Hi everyone,

I have an index.php page with session variables being propagated through a MySQL database (same method as one of the columns on phpbuilder used http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/ying20000602.php3 ).

If I do something like this in the index.php file it works great. I call start_session() in inc/header.php.

require("inc/header.php");
.
.
session_register("MyVar");
.
.

and the variable is registered fine. But when I do something like this:

require("inc/header.php");
require("inc/myfile.php");
.
session_register("MyVar");
.
my_function(10);
.

and my_function() function is defined in "myfile.php" like this:

function my_function($var) {
session_register("var");
}

it doesn't register the value for var with the session. I get the var variable in the database like this:

MyVar|i:33;!var|

and var is never stored. If I do an isset($var) after the call the my_function it returns false. Why doesn't this work? I need to keep the two files seperate for design reasons. Also, I had planned on using this technique quite a bit, is this a bad way to register session variables? Can anyone shed some light on this? The basic question is - how can I register a session variable that is in an included file?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[Anon]

Hey everyone. I found the problem. Thanks to a post on the annotated user's manual at www.php.net in the session_register() section.

The excerpt of the page follows:

21-Aug-2000 12:24

Registering a variable creates a global instance of the variable, but it does not automatically pull it into the local scope.

So to set a registered variable within a function:
<?
session_start();

function test( $val ) {
session_register( "somevar" );
// $somevar = $val; //-- This will NOT set the value of the registered somevar, instead it creates a local, albeit unrelated, instance
$GLOBALS['somevar'] = $val; //This sets the registered $somevar
}

test( "A value" );
?>

And there you have it. A session variable must be referenced by the $GLOBALS array if it is not local to the function trying to set it. See ya
Jeremy