PHP » Tips and Tutorials » Cookies and Sessions

A collection of 19 tips on understanding and using sessions in PHP. Clear explanations and tutorial exercises are provided on starting and closing sessions, saving and retrieving values in sessions, deciding how session IDs to be transferred, deciding where to store session files, deciding when to expire session values, etc. Topics included in this collections: What Is a Session? How To Turn On the Session Support? How To Save/Retrieve Values to the Current Session? What Is a Session ID? How To Retrieve the Session ID of the Current Session? What Are the Options to Transfer Session IDs? How Session IDs Are Transferred on Your Web Server? How To Force the PHP Engine to Use Cookies to Transfer Session IDs? Is It More Secure to Use Cookies to Transfer Session IDs? Where Are the Session Values Stored? What Set the Timeout Period on Session Values? How To Remove Values Saved in the Current Session? How To Tell If a Session Is New? What Is session_register()?

Cookies are just a basic aspect of PHP, but can be used in so many things. From logging in and out a user on your website to keeping the name of the skin they use on your website. Below I will explain how to set (add) a cookie, delete one and then display/check one. I will first show the PHP code and then explain it.

A collection of 23 tips on understanding and managing cookies in PHP. Clear explanations and tutorial exercises are provided on setting and receiving cookies, creating and removing persistent cookies, specifying domain and path to restrict cookies, finding cookies in cookie files, cookie limitations.

DB_eSession is a feature packed PHP class that stores session data in a MySQL database rather than files (PHP's default). It is powerful, designed with security in mind, and yet easy to utilize. The code contains lots of comments, it comes with full documentation, and examples of how to use the class including a basic authentication login/logout process. It includes member functions useful (to webmasters) for monitoring or viewing, deleting, and altering sessions validity like in the case of locking one or more sessions upon detection of unauthorized use. This custom MySQL database session handler class might just be what you're looking to implement on your web or intranet site.