Stuff That Spins

Archive · November 6, 2012

PHP Session Not Working $_SESSION being reset

PHP
My dumb ass was trouble shooting my PHP Session for at least an hour. The session was being reset everytime I would re-load the page or go to another page. I couldn't store any session variables. 
<!doctype html>
<?
session_start();

// Turn on all error reporting
error_reporting(0);

echo "session_id: " . session_id();

if (empty($_SESSION['count'])) {
   $_SESSION['count'] = 1;
} else {
   $_SESSION['count']++;
}
echo "<br/>";
var_dump($_SESSION);

?>

<p>
Hello visitor, you have seen this page <?php echo $_SESSION['count']; ?> times.
</p>
So, why wouldn't the above code work? Because the <!doctype html> or any other content was ABOVE the session_start(); 
<!doctype html>
was at the top of my document. I wasn't getting any error, "headers already sent" or whatever normally happens. As soon as I put the session_start(); at the beginning of my page it all worked properly! I've seen similar things happen when you have a space at before your <?PHP init at the top of a page. BAD: 
 <?PHP
GOOD: 
<?PHP
you probably can't see it here, but there's a " " / space at the beginning of the first document. Sometimes you might accidentally put a space in there.