PHP DB - Sessions help needed !!!

Author

Sessions help needed !!!

Chris Payne

2006-02-17, 6:56 pm

Hi there everyone,

OK this script worked perfectly on my own apache webserver and I had to move
it to the main live server, but for some reason it's not passing session
values in the same way and i'm positive it's something damn obvious.

On my server I can use:

echo $credits_system;
echo $credits_left;
echo $foldername;

To display the information to make sure it is being passed, but it returns
blank on their server (Same versions of everything except I didn't install
it so it may have something turned off in the config - which i don't have
control over, sigh). The thing is, the last one - $foldername I MUST have
access to as the database uses this as a reference for searches and without
this working I can't pull the data I need ($foldername is an ID and also
refers to physical folders/directories on the apache webserver for video
files).

Is there some obvious that I can check to see what's going on that I can't
think about right now?

Any help or pointers would be really appreciated.

Chris

Neil Smith [MVP, Digital media]

2006-02-18, 6:55 pm

At 22:19 17/02/2006, you wrote:
>From: "Chris Payne" <chris@artistwd.com>
>To: <php-db@lists.php.net>
>Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:18:57 -0500
>Message-ID: < 000e01c63410$253c2ea0$6501a8c0@chris35bf
l6odw>
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000F_01C633E6.3C6626A0"
>Subject: Sessions help needed !!!
>
>Hi there everyone,
>
>OK this script worked perfectly on my own apache webserver and I had to move
>it to the main live server, but for some reason it's not passing session
>values in the same way and i'm positive it's something damn obvious.
>
>On my server I can use:
>
>echo $credits_system;
>echo $credits_left;
>echo $foldername;

Does it work if you ask for $_SESSION["credits_system"] etc ?

The reason I ask is from the code above, you're using globally scoped
variables, which would require you to be using either an old version
of PHP on your test server, or have to manually enabled register_globals.

Register globals is of course a major security risk in that it
pollutes your variable namespace with whatever the user feels like
sending to your server in $_GET, $_POST, $_COOKIE etc etc. So your
code can be easily manipulated into undefined behaviours unless you
declare and initialise every variable it uses.

>To display the information to make sure it is being passed, but it returns
>blank on their server (Same versions of everything except I didn't install
>it so it may have something turned off in the config - which i don't have

I think you need to look at phpinfo() for that server. Check
register_globals, it will be 'off'.
Turn it 'off' on your test server so it mirrors the live environment
and see if your code still works (it probably won't).

The other check to make with the hosting company - I've only seen
this once or twice on cheap hosting :
See if they're using multiple servers. The session handler by default
uses files, which are local to an individual server.

If you visit the 'page' again, you may well be being server from
another web server in a cluster. Of course that server knows nothing
about the local session files on the server you initially got sent
the page from, cause they're on another machines' filesystem, thus
replicating your problem.

The answer in that case is to register your own session handler (such
as a DB) which resides on a known server.

>control over, sigh). The thing is, the last one - $foldername I MUST have
>access to as the database uses this as a reference for searches and without

I don't understand what you mean by that, can you expand some more ?
It's not clear how the database uses 'foldername' - is it
concatenated as part of a query ?

>this working I can't pull the data I need ($foldername is an ID and also
>refers to physical folders/directories on the apache webserver for video

If as noted above your host clusters servers, then you're SOL and
will have to manage a central file repository or call across servers
with fopen() etc to get at the [distributed] data in the "$foldername" path.

Cheers - Neil

Sponsored Links