PHP Sessions Disappearing - php

Question

I come from a classic ASP programming background and boy PHP is really frustrating. What's the deal with PHP Sessions? In Classic ASP you Simply put:
<% Session("Name") = "XYZ" %>
And that Session is always available unless you kill it or it times out. With PHP I get a Session to work from one page to another but when I refresh the page I lose my session. Here is the code I have:
Page: modules.php
// Start the session
session_start();
Page: index.php
include 'modules/modules.php';
$_SESSION['username'] = "MyName";
if (isset($_SESSION['username']) && !empty($_SESSION['username']) {
header('Location: main.php');
}
Page: main.php
include 'modules/modules.php';
echo "My username: ".$_SESSION['username'];
exit();
Now because I gave Session Username a default value it will redirect to main.php and it shows the username fine. But if I refresh the page it disappears. I ran this to see if there was any errors in the modules.php page right below the start session:
ini_set('display_errors',1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors',1);
error_reporting(-1);
None were returned. But I can't figure out why my PHP Sessions just disappear. I am trying to create a login page where the user will login and his/hers info will be carried along each page so I can have there ID info and to make sure they are logged in. So could someone please tell me what I am doing wrong?
My Modules Page:
// Start the session
session_start();
/* Database Connection Settings */
$_SESSION['servername'] = "localhost";
$_SESSION['mysql_username'] = "xxxxxxx";
$_SESSION['mysql_password'] = "xxxxxxx";
$_SESSION['dbname'] = "mydb";
//Turn on Error Report. True = On / False = Off
ErrorReporting(true);
//Display Error.
function ErrorReporting($ErrOn){
if ($ErrOn == true) {
//Show Error
ini_set('display_errors',1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors',1);
error_reporting(-1);
}
}
function db_conn($servername, $mysql_username, $mysql_password, $dbname) {
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
// Test if connection succeeded
if(mysqli_connect_errno()) {
die("Database connection failed: " .
mysqli_connect_error() .
" (" . mysqli_connect_errno() . ")"
);
}
}
/**************************************
Close Database Connection Function.
***************************************/
function db_disconn() {
$conn = null;
}
/***************************************
Employee Login Check:
****************************************/
function CheckLogin($strUserName, $strPassword) {
if (isset($strUserName) && !empty($strUserName) && isset($strPassword) && !empty($strPassword)) {
$conn = new mysqli($_SESSION['servername'], $_SESSION['mysql_username'], $_SESSION['mysql_password'], $_SESSION['dbname']);
// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
$sql = "SELECT id, firstname, lastname, user_name, password FROM tbl_employees WHERE user_name='$strUserName' AND password='$strPassword' AND account_disabled='';";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
//Check and see if there are records avaiable.
if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
// output data of each row with a loop.
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
//Store the info into a session variable.
$_SESSION['eid'] = $row["id"];
$_SESSION['firstname'] = $row["firstname"];
$_SESSION['lastname'] = $row["lastname"];
return $_SESSION["eid"];
//break; //Stop the loop process.
}
} else {
//No records found prompt the user.
return "User name or Password was Incorrect! Please try again!";
}
db_disconn(); /*Close db*/
}
}

Answer 1

You're calling $_SESSION as if it were a function - $_SESSION("username") - while it's actually an array.
You should use $_SESSION["username"] to get the variable value.
You should be getting a Fatal error: Can't use function return value in write context ... but you probably did something wrong with turning on error reporting and you're not getting any errors.
The correct working code would look like this:
<?php
session_start();
if (isset($_SESSION["username"]) && !empty($_SESSION["username"])) {
echo "My username: ".$_SESSION["username"];
} else {
echo "Not set";
$_SESSION["username"] = "MyName";
}