Sessions and Objects

[Matthew Bates]

Hi,

I'm currently building an object-oriented shopping cart with PHP 4.3.2 and
MySQL 4.0.14.

I am looking at storing a Cart object within a PHP session, however I am not
completely sure on the best way to achieve this. I have read up and there
seems to be varying advice. Should I need to serialise and unserialise the
object or is this automatic and should I be using session_registe r()? For
reference, register_global s is off.

I'd be grateful if anybody could help.

Thanks in advance,
Matt

[powerboy]

Re: Sessions and Objects

"Matthew Bates" <mattybates@hot mail.com> wrote in message
news:bzL4b.2382 $1K1.20652303@n ews-text.cableinet. net...[color=blue]
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently building an object-oriented shopping cart with PHP[/color]
4.3.2 and[color=blue]
> MySQL 4.0.14.
>
> I am looking at storing a Cart object within a PHP session, however[/color]
I am not[color=blue]
> completely sure on the best way to achieve this. I have read up and[/color]
there[color=blue]
> seems to be varying advice. Should I need to serialise and[/color]
unserialise the[color=blue]
> object or is this automatic and should I be using[/color]
session_registe r()? For[color=blue]
> reference, register_global s is off.
>
> I'd be grateful if anybody could help.[/color]

With your version of PHP, you wouldn't want to use session_registe r()
since it's deprecated.

This also means, your objects are not (un)serialised automatically. So
you'd want to do something like:

At the start of the page:
- include the class (since serialized objects do not contain the class
functions)
- start the session (this must be after the class include)
- unserialize the object

At the end of the page:
- serialize the object

For more info http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop.serialization.php

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Re: Sessions and Objects

On Tue, 2 Sep 2003 02:04:43 +0800, "powerboy"
<powerboy@rarex treme.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>"Matthew Bates" <mattybates@hot mail.com> wrote:[color=green]
>> I'm currently building an object-oriented shopping cart with PHP[/color]
>4.3.2 and[color=green]
>> MySQL 4.0.14.[/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Should I need to serialise and unserialise the
>> object or is this automatic and should I be using
>> session_registe r()? For
>> reference, register_global s is off.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
>This also means, your objects are not (un)serialised automatically.[/color]
[color=blue]
>At the start of the page:
>- include the class (since serialized objects do not contain the class
>functions)
>- start the session (this must be after the class include)
>- unserialize the object
>
>At the end of the page:
>- serialize the object
>
>For more info http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop.serialization.php[/color]

my experience agrees with what the first comment on that page is:
objects are automatically (un)serialized when putting in and getting
out of a session.

if you have resources in your object (like a database connection), you
may want to look at __sleep and __wakeup to shut down and restore them
properly.

[Rainer Herbst]

Re: Sessions and Objects

Matthew Bates schrieb:[color=blue]
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently building an object-oriented shopping cart with PHP 4.3.2 and
> MySQL 4.0.14.
>
> I am looking at storing a Cart object within a PHP session, however I am not
> completely sure on the best way to achieve this. I have read up and there
> seems to be varying advice. Should I need to serialise and unserialise the
> object or is this automatic and should I be using session_registe r()? For
> reference, register_global s is off.
>
> I'd be grateful if anybody could help.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Matt
>
>[/color]

With your PHP version, storing objects in the session should work quite
easy - just set
$_SESSION["cart"] = $your_card_obje ct;

i.e., no serizalize/unserialize is necessary.

One problem may occure when you will retrive the object from the session
- you need to include the class definition before the session starts!

But I found it easier to store only object IDs in the session and to
store/retrieve the object itself from the database.

Regards!
Rainer

--
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Rainer Herbst Linux - Registered
ZEIK User #319157
Universität Potsdam Usual disclaimers applies!
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