SessionVars

Session Variables are a great way of getting and setting information when working with more than one web page. Though cookies are one way of accomplishing such a task, session variables do so without putting anything on the user's computer. Because such variables are available between multiple web pages they are often referred to as global variables.

The first thing one must do when working with session variables is to start the session. We do this with the following simple PHP statement:

session_start();

Once this is done we can work with our session variables. Let's try creating/setting some session variables in one page that we would be able to access from another page.

<?php
session_start();
$_SESSION["animal"] = "dog";
$_SESSION["name"] = "fido";
?>

We have now set the variable animal to dog...and the variable name to fido. Let's see how we would access those variables from a different web page.

<?php
session_start();
echo "The animal is a " . $_SESSION["animal"] . "<br>";
echo "Its name is " . $_SESSION["name"];
?>

Notice that whether we are setting or accessing the session variables, we must always use session_start() first.

Exercise

Create a color session variable and set it to yellow. Then show the contents of the color variable using echo. Don't forget to start the session before setting the variables.