Sessions??

[Jamesking56]

my PHP logins do not workI found out I have to use Sessions...but I'm confused...How do I use them?

[jhecht]

theres a few ways. The beginners way to use them use with the $_SESSION variable. A lot of beginners(myself included at the time) dump all of the login data into the $_SESSION array. I'll tell you now: BAD IDEA.I'll make a quick mock up of a login page, and then show you what i mean:

//Login Pageif(sizeof($_POST) <0){   die("Post data not entered");}else{  session_start();  $user = $_POST['user'];  $pw = md5($_POST['pass']);  //User and Pw variables Passwords has been md5 encrypted    $sql = "SELECT user_id FROM user_table WHERE user_name = '$user' AND password = '$pw'";  $ans = mysql_query($sql,$yourDbConnection) or die(mysql_error());  if(mysql_num_rows($ans)==1){		$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($ans);		$_SESSION['user_id']= $row['user_id'];  }}

Now, on all pages that require the user to be logged in, we do this:

 session_start(); if(!isset($_SESSION['user_id'])){	 die('you are not logged in');  } $sql = "SELECT * FROM user_table WHERE user_id = ".$_SESSION['user_id']; $ans = mysql_query($sql,$yourDbConnection) or die(mysql_error()); $user_data = mysql_fetch_assoc($ans);// all user data is now in the user_data array. Every column in your db is now a key for the array here.   echo "Hello <b>".$user_data['user_name']."<b>";

if you need the $_SESSION data, you MUST call session_start before anything else happens.