session problem in php4.0

Anon

Hello everyone.
I'm tired of trying to get sessions working on windows 98 with pws 4.0.
Does anyone got it to work.
When I use session_start, apperars an error message saying "page could not be displayed correctly".
Help wanted...
Thank's a lot.
Bye.

Anon

PWS, icky, if I were you I'd go get a copy of apache and the PHP Apache mod (avaliable from http://php4win.de/) and enjoy. Not only is Apache faster than PWS it's also way more configurable.

Anon

Hmmm, this sounds familiar. This error may be generated by your web browser, and IT may be doing so due to the following.

Do you have ANY text appearing on the webpage prior to calling session_start()? I ask this because it is VERY important. Sessions are, by default, based on the use of cookies. Cookies are created by putting information in the header of the HTML file being returned to a browser. Header information (like using the header() function in PHP) MUST be created before ANY other information in the HTML file is output, including the tag.

For example,

File1.PHP == BAAAAAADDDD

<? session_start(); ?>

File2.PHP == GOOOOODDDD

<? session_start(); ?>

It's a fine point, but seems to nail just about everyone when they first start working with sessions/cookies/headers. Note even having just whitespace above the initial <? can be enough to cause this.

If this isn't the case, write back and we'll see if we can't figure it out. Currently I run PHP v4.0.2 on NT 4 SP 5 running IIS (the "big brother" of PWS), so odds are whatever you're seeing would occur to me as well.

Anon

Hi there.
I've tryed everything, but still nothing happens. I don't know what could be wrong...
I've tryed runing php as an executable in dos-mode and i think that everything works ok. But nothing apperars on the browser except a msg saying: The page cannote be diplayed.... please try the following.... bla, bla, bla.
Here's a exemple of my short script.

<?php session_start();
print($counter);
$counter++;
session_register("counter");

?>

Thanks a lot for any help.
Bye.

Frank Seesink wrote:

Hmmm, this sounds familiar. This error may be generated by your web browser, and IT may be doing so due to the following.

For example,

File1.PHP == BAAAAAADDDD

<? session_start(); ?>

File2.PHP == GOOOOODDDD

<? session_start(); ?>

If this isn't the case, write back and we'll see if....

Anon

Ok, NOW it seems pretty clear. If you look at the code you provided, you'll notice that the first time you run it, $counter is not defined. So basically you won't output ANYTHING, and a web browser doesn't like receiving a webpage that's empty. Reload the page after that, and it should work fine, as $counter will not only be defined (incremented from the undefined state to 1) but will also be registered in the now created session file. Reload the page several times and you will see the counter climb.

I just tried your sample code on my box (using Netscape 4.73 for Win9x) and got the following error message from Netscape on the 1st attempt:

"The document contained no data. Try again later, or contact the server's administrator."

To correct the situation, always be sure to output SOMETHING...ANYTHING in order to make your PHP code work. So you may wish to change your code to

<?
php session_start();
print($counter);
$counter++;
session_register("counter");
echo " ";
?>

Or anything that guarantees the page isn't empty. Hope that helps.

Anon

Heh, I guess thats just a netscape thing, if I access a php script using IE and the script doesn't actualy output anything it just shows a blank page, and looking at the source it also creates the basic /<head>/<body> tags.

I guess NS is just more picky about these things.

Anon

Shaun, I've tryed sending somthing to output but still, nothing. I've tryed your example code but... nothing, except the error message on I.E., I'm feeling that error is caused by the i.e., maybe the browser settings are not adjusted correctly OR php is badly installed...

Any Tips.....

Thank's a lot for your time.

Rgd's RUBEN

Anon

Which example code, I didn't post any example code in reply to this message. Did you get example code from one of my pervious messages? I'd be better able to help if I knew of what code you speak.

Anon

Sorry. My mistake, it wasn't you. I was refering to Frank.
My apologies.

Anon

No problem, just checking... 🙂

Anon

Well, have you been able to get ANY PHP code to work? Let's start with something totally basic like

<?
echo "Hello world<br>";
?>

Does THAT at least work? If so, sounds like the PHP setup is ok. The next thing is, if you could, could you cut&paste the session portion of your PHP.INI file so we can see how it's setup? And as much information as you can provide on how your box is configured (OS, location of PHP files, webserver, etc.). The more you provide, the more it'll help.

I'm sure we're just overlooking something here. I've now got PHP v4.0.2 working quite nicely with the CGI (.EXE) version. The ISAPI module is still a touch buggy, so I'd avoid that one if I were you.

Anyway, if you can, let us know how you're setup.