Programming Forums - Sessions Problem

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Sessions Problem

I'm trying to learn more about PHP sessions, as I'm going to be using them in a website I'm building soon.

Anyways, my problem with them is that I'm wondering how I can make them last after the user's browser is closed.

Here is a code example:

<?php

start_session();



$_SESSION['name']='Andrew';

$_SESSION['country']='Canada';

$_SESSION['age']=16;



?>

Then obviously I would view the session on another page with code like this:



<?php

start_session();



echo $_SESSION['name'];

//and so on



?>

Now, as I understand it... sessions are stored in a cookie on the user's browser so that other scripts can use them and such. The above code always works, and I can go to another page and come back and it still works. But, if I close my browser and I come back to the page that views the session variables, they aren't set anymore.

I've tried changing settings like session:cookie.lifetime, session:cookie.expire, etc. but so far, I've pretty much had no luck. I've searched with google thoroughly and checked the PHP manual, and I haven't found anything that's helped me out.

So, anyone have anything that'll help me out? Basically, I'm going to be using sessions with MySQL for authentication and such, so I figured it would be nice to have users logged in when they come back after closing their browsers. I assume this is possible, as I've seen it before, but perhaps the websites were using something different?

Re: Sessions Problem

The whole point of a session cookie is that it lasts for the duration of your session - i.e. until you close your browser, at which point it nukes all session cookies. If you want persistent cookies, use $_COOKIE and the setcookie function.

Re: Sessions Problem

Alright, I guess I misunderstood what sessions did... thanks for your help.

Re: Sessions Problem

Alright, so now I'm working on the actual authentication script for my website, and I'm using cookies. I tested out cookies, and I had them working, but now when I try it, it isn't working.

Here is my code:

while ($result=mysql_fetch_array($query)) {

                //loop through the usernames and passwords

                if (($new_user == $result['username']) && ($new_password == $result['password'])) {

                        //if the user matches a user in the database, setup the cookies

                        setcookie('user_name', $new_user, time()+3600);

                        setcookie('password', $new_password, time()+3600);



                        //create the session variables

                        $_SESSION['user_name'] = $_COOKIE['user_name'];

                        $_SESSION['password'] = $_COOKIE['password'];

                        

                        print_r($_SESSION);

                        print_r($_COOKIE);

                        

                        //create normal variables

                        $user = $_SESSION['user_name'];

                        $password = $_SESSION['password'];

                        

                        //end the loop

                        break;

                }

        }

I basically just have it looping through a mysql query looking to match a username and password, and then it puts it into a cookie, then a session cookie and a variable. It wasn't working, so I used print_r to view what's in the $_SESSION and $_COOKIE global array, but there was nothing in it.

Any thoughts on why exactly it doesn't work?

Re: Sessions Problem

are the passwords in your database encrypted? or rather are you encrypting the pass on its way to the query? any mismatch of encryption would throw it.

Re: Sessions Problem

I'd like to see the code before that segment - problem could be up there.

Re: Sessions Problem

Well, I used the sha1() function to encrypt the password, but I have the same thing in the database.

For example, the password for the user I am testing with is asdfasdf, which is changed to: 92429d82a41e930486c6de5ebda9602d55c39986

The password in the database is also: 92429d82a41e930486c6de5ebda9602d55c39986.

I don't think the password is a problem, because it gets through the loop and it gets to the part where it has

print_r($_SESSION)

But, it shows a blank array.

Re: Sessions Problem

Have you called session_start?

Re: Sessions Problem

I'm pretty sure I have... and I'll check now... but is session_start() necessary for cookies to work?

EDIT: Just checked... printing the $_COOKIE array does display a session ID, therefore I can safely assume that I started it.

Re: Sessions Problem

I'm not going to comment on the rest of it yet, but I will say that you should look in to WHERE clauses in SQL. Looping through all user records is bad. Tell the database which one you are looking for.