Using PHP Sessions

When you get to a stage when you need to pass user data from one page to another you have the option to do this without the user knowing by using PHP Session variables.

Sessions are basically server-side cookies which have a corresponding client side cookie that contains a reference to its server-side counterpart. When a user visits a page, the client sends the reference code to the server, and PHP will then match that reference code to a server-side cookie and load the data in the server’s cookie into the $_SESSION superglobal.

Setting Sessions

In order to use the $_SESSION superglobal we first need to start a session by calling the session_start(); function. once this is done we can set a session variable as shown below.

session_start();  

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

echo "My Name is ". $_SESSION['name']; 

Destroying a session

Session variables only last as long as the user has their browser open so a session is automatically destroyed when they close their browser unless you edit your php.ini file. We can however destroy our session as shown below.

session_start();  
  unset($_SESSION['name']); 

Destroy all sessions

session_start();  
session_destroy();