How do you put a session like this into an array - php

Question

I have the follow two files and I would like to transmit information between the two files using a session, but I am not getting the right results. Here are the files
index.php:
<?php
session_start();
for ($i=0; $i<=2; $i++) {
echo ("<p><a href='getpage.php?row=$item_title' target='_blank'>" . $item_title . "</a>");
echo ("<br>");
echo ($item_desc . "</p>");
$_SESSION['item_link'] = $item_link;
$_SESSION['item_title'] = $item_title;
}
and the getpage.php has the following
<?php
session_start();
if (isset($_SESSION['item_link']) && isset($_SESSION['item_title'])) {
$item_link = $_SESSION['item_link'];
$item_title = $_SESSION['item_title'];
header( "Location: $item_link" );
}
But I keep getting the last item_link when I click the link and run the getpage.php file by clicking the link from the index file. How do I put the session into an array so that I am not only getting the last value in session after you click the link?

Answer 1

This is a quick drive-by attempt at an answer, but you might try
$_SESSION['item_link'][] = $item_link;
$_SESSION['item_title'][] = $item_title;
Then your session variables will themselves be arrays.

Answer 2

I suspect your code is based on a misunderstanding on the underlying mechanics. Files are nothing but static assets, nothing but a bunch of zeroes and ones that do nothing but use disk space until you do something with them.
Just printing the name of a file:
echo ("<p><a href='getpage.php?row=$item_title' target='_blank'>" . $item_title . "</a>");
... will neither execute the file nor load it in memory or assign any resource of variable to it. It's just text. Variables defined in the for-each-file loop will not transmit to the files. The source code in the file will eventually run when the user clicks on the link.
Secondly, that's not how PHP sessions work anyway. Session data is not attached to a specific file, it's session-wide information.
You appear to be partially aware of URL parameters. That's the proper way to transmit information as long as it isn't sensitive or too long. If you pass $item_title in the URL:
echo ("<p><a href='getpage.php?row=$item_title' target='_blank'>"
... it'll be available right at $_GET['row']. There's no need to fiddle with sessions:
$_SESSION['item_link'] = $item_link; // What for?
Last but not least, when you inject text into a string that's aimed to be consumed by a computer (such as a URL or an HTML document) you need to ensure you don't break the data format. PHP provides the following built-in tools:
For URLs: rawurlencode()
For HTML: htmlspecialchars()
So your echo should look like this:
echo ("<p><a href='getpage.php?row=" . htmlspecialchars(rawurlencode($item_title)) . "' target='_blank'>"