Php Sessions

This is a brief introduction to PHP sessions. Creating sessions are very easy!

This is a brief introduction to PHP sessions. Creating sessions are very easy! Frameworks and CMSes usually have a built in class to handle PHP sessions, but today I was working on a project which didn’t have such a class.
Also this is a good article if you are just learning PHP.
I wrote this article back in 2005.

Sessions allow you to set variables in one script and access them from another. To create a session you can use the Session_start function.

When working with sessions always place the following function on the first line of your script:

php session_start(); ?>

Variables

You can assign variables to a session by using the $_SESSION global variable.

$_SESSION['test'] = 'hello';
$value = $_SESSION['test'];
echo "The value of the session variable 'test' is ($value)";

Access saved data

The session_decode() function allows you to replace current session with encoded session data.

Code Igniter

As I now do most of my work in Code Igniter I’d like to mention that Code Igniter’s session class does not utilize native PHP sessions.
Read more about CodeIgniter’s Session Class.

Reference

• PHP.net - Session Handling
• CodeIgniter’s Session Class