CODEWITHSUNDEEP
php
Ehis Asibor
Ehis Asibor

Reputation: 37

Session regenerate id and session_save_path( );

Hello I have this script below:

 <?php
   session_save_path('sessions/');
    if (!isset($_SESSION)) {
    session_start();
    }
   $loginUsername = A;

   if (PHP_VERSION >= 5.1) {session_regenerate_id(true); } else {session_regenerate_id();}
$_SESSION['wallet_email'] = $loginUsername;
   echo  $_SESSION['wallet_email']

?>

Now I have noticed that once a new session id is generated, I lose the path specified in "session_save_path('sessions/')". This means I am unable to create new sessions.

I actually get the following error.

Warning: Unknown: open(sessions//sess_7af5c5f2f2bd83afff0203cc45190260, O_RDWR) failed:    No such file or directory (2) in Unknown on line 0

Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (sessions/) in Unknown on line 0

Please I need urgent help with this.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1053

Answers (1)

Stephen Behnfeldt
Stephen Behnfeldt

Reputation: 11

As has been said, use an absolute path for the parameter to session_save_path( ). Here's why.

session_save_path( ) and session_regenerate_id( ) do not play nicely together when you use a relative path as a parameter to the former. On my setup (Windows 7, Apache 2.2.25, php 5.3.27), I have the following index.php in c:\www\test:

<?php
date_default_timezone_set( 'America/New_York' );
ini_set( 'session.save_path', './sessions' );
//ini_set( 'session.save_path', 'c:/www/test/sessions' );

session_start( );
if ( !isset( $_SESSION[ 'count' ] )) {
    $_SESSION[ 'count' ] = 0;
}
$s1 = session_id( );
$b1 = $_SESSION[ 'count' ]++;
//session_regenerate_id( true );
$s2 = session_id( );
$b2 = $_SESSION[ 'count' ]++;
?>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Test</h1>
        <p><?php echo "$s1: $b1"; ?></p>
        <p><?php echo "$s2: $b2"; ?></p>
    </body>
</html>

It works just as you would think. When I browse to the script:

  • the same session ID is printed twice;
  • an integer follows each session ID;
  • the second integer is 1 greater than the first integer;
  • refreshing the page causes the integers to grow by one with each successive refresh;
  • the session file is found in directory c:\www\test\sessions (this directory MUST be created beforehand - PHP does not create it for you!);
  • and that session file is updated with each successive refresh.

When I uncomment the session_regenerate_id( ) command and browse to my script:

  • I get two different session IDs;
  • upon refresh, the 1st session ID is the same as the previous page's second session ID;
  • the integers are always 0 and 1 respectively;
  • there is no session file in c:\www\test\sessions. (If I pass 'false' to regen( ), then a series of empty session files will accumulate.)

When I instead use the second ini_set command (with the full path), it works fine.

The problem seems to be that the regen function confuses PHP: after the regen, PHP writes the session files to c:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\sessions - or, it tries to, but fails if that directory has not already been created. Once I created the second sessions directory, I saw sessions files show up there. But PHP isn't looking there when I call session_start( ), so all the accumulated session knowledge is lost between script invocations.

I only figured this out because I was NOT getting 'directory does not exist' error messages in my 'php_errors.log' - at least, not where I was expecting. I spotted another file by that name in the Apache2.2 directory. In php.ini, I had specified a simple filename for my error_log directive, without the directory path. Any error messages generated before the regen command went to c:\www\test\php_errors.log, but after the regen then went to the file in the Apache directory. So the confusion regen causes appears to extend beyond the session functionality.

Upvotes: 1

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