Save data in Arrays during sessions

Hi I'm a new member and I need some help here

I've got a book selling site and I'm trying to create a way of customers clicking on buttons generated from a query and that list of book IDs or titles appearing in a text area box in a form ready for posting as email.

The question is about sessions and arrays

Now I need to preserve data across multiple clicks, as the book IDs are added to an array - registered in a session. My problem - and I think a lot of people have had this - is that the array data is not preserved between pages.

The code i've got so far is :

PHP: Select all

 session_start();
    
    $AddStuff = $_POST['BookText']; 
    
    
     if (!session_is_registered('stuff'))
    
         {        

        session_register('stuff');
        
        $stuff = array();
        
             
         }
         
     if (session_is_registered('stuff')){

       
        $stuff[] = $AddStuff;
       
       } 

OK i've used session_register which many say is no good but there is no security issue here - no logins or credit card numbers - just passing info to an email form. And it works - BUT

when I go back and click on another book button the array doesn't get any bigger - there is always just ONE element in it - because the info in the array isn't being preserved 'between' pages.

I understand this is a bug in versions of php after 4.0 or something and I've seen some people recommend $_SESSION - which I've sort of tried but that doesn't even seem to enter one element.

Can anyone help me out here ?

Andy

$_SESSION works on anything later then 4.1.0. And earlier versions have $HTTP_SESSION_VARS. I've never heard of this problem before and I've coded with everything since PHP 3.*....

I have had similar problems.

If you have php >= 4.1 you could use

PHP: Select all

 session_start();



    



    $AddStuff = $_POST['BookText']; 



    



    



     if (!$_SESSION['stuff']))    



         {               



               $stuff = array();            



         } else {



       



        $stuff = unserialize($_SESSION['stuff']);       



       } 







      $stuff[] = $AddStuff;



      



     $_SESSION['stuff'] = serilize($stuff); 

Serilizing and passing as a string seems to work (I can't seem to figure out the reason why this happens as on some sites the arrays pass around without issue).

When you want to get the array in $_SESSION['stuff']

you can use $someStuff = unserialize($_SESSION['stuff']);

Hope that helps,

Cheers,