file_get_contents for insertion in database - php

Question

I have a two pages in my website, one is named "new_account.php" and the other is "visitor.php". The user can choose to create a new account for themselves or just go with a visitor account.
When the user picks "visitor" I make a request to "new_account.php" to create a temporary account with a random username and password, to be deleted later when the user is done. I'm using file_get_contents for the request, since the page returns the user hash which I use to automatically login the user.
This is "visitor.php":
$url = getBaseUrl().'new-account.php';
$data = array(
'name' => $tempName,
'character-name' => $tempCharacterName,
'gender' => $tempGender,
'age' => $tempAge,
'parent-email' => $tempParentEmail,
'password' => $tempPassword,
'password-confirmation' => $tempPassword,
'temporary' => TRUE
);
$options = array(
'http' => array(
'header' => "Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n",
'method' => 'POST',
'content' => http_build_query($data),
),
);
$context = stream_context_create($options);
$result = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);
var_dump($result);
if($result != "error") {
User::loginUser($result, TRUE, $conn);
User::ifUserLoggedRedirect('game.php',$conn);
}
My problem is that, while the request is successful and a new random user is inserted in the database, when User::loginUser tries to query the user data using the hash returned by file_get_contents (such as the user icon or user name) I'm getting an empty result set.
User::loginUser is this:
public static function loginUser($userHash, $temporary, $conn) {
if(User::isAnyLogged($conn))
User::logout($conn);
User::safeSessionStart();
$result = $conn->prepare('SELECT p.screen_name, pi.url, p.id FROM player as p, player_icon as pi WHERE p.user_hash=? AND pi.id = p.player_icon_id');
$result->bind_param('s',$userHash);
$result->execute();
$res = $result->get_result();
if($res->num_rows == 0) {
die("Invalid user with hash ".$userHash);
}
$user_info = $res->fetch_assoc();
$_SESSION['user'] = new User($userHash, $temporary, $user_info['screen_name'], $user_info['url'], $user_info['id']);
setcookie('userHash',$userHash);
setcookie('temporary',$temporary ? '1' : '0' );
return $_SESSION['user'];
}
And the call always dies with an invalid hash, but if I query the user from phpmyadmin using the hash the user is actually there. Going through the normal registration by accessing "new_account.php" also works.
The first thing I tried was closing and reopenning the connection after getting the result from file_get_contents but that didn't work. Using mysqli::refresh also didn't work. I tried moving the login part of the code to the "new_account.php" but apparently I also can't set the $_SESSION from a request using file_get_contents.
I also could solve this by copying the new account code to the visitor page, but I would rather keep the account creation in a single page. Is there anything else I can try?

Answer 1

You should use require_once to include the new-account.PHP
This way, you can use the code of the included file as if it were in the file from where you include it.