Session variables not transferring between pages [duplicate] - php

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I am making a simple login page however my $_SESSION variables are not transferring between pages. I've read numerous other posts about session_start() at the beginning of each page, folder writing priveleges, session_write_close(), etc., but none have worked. The session_write_close() doesn't make a difference withor without so I just left it in. All of the code below works fine as I have left out code below and above such as where $login_fail comes from.
Currently I set the the $_SESSION variables as shown in the code below:
if($login_fail == "")
{
$query = "SELECT first_name, last_name, email_address,password FROM user_info WHERE email_address = '$email_address' AND password = '$password'";
$result = mysql_query($query);
if(!$result) die ("Database access : " .mysql_error());
elseif (mysql_num_rows($result))
{
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
$token = "$email_address";
$token1 = "$password";
echo "token: $token, token1: $token1, row[1]: $row[1], row2: $row[2] </ br>";
if($token == $row[2] && $token1 == $row[3])
{
session_start();
$_SESSION['first_name'] = $row[0];
$_SESSION['last_name'] = $row[1];
$_SESSION['email_address'] = $row[2];
$_SESSION['password'] = $row[3];
$_SESSION['check'] = md5($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
//print_r($_SESSION);
session_write_close();
header("Location: http://127.0.0.1/websiteproject/test.php");
}
else die("Invalid username/password combination");
}
}
else
{
echo "Login failed. Please try again.";
}
I have done print_r($_SESSION) and it prints all the correct information.
The session variables are then called again in my test.php just to see what happens in really simply code.
session_start();
print_r($_SESSION);
The result is an empty array.
When I go to the easyphp temp file where my sessions are written I always find two files: the original one with all the correct information and a new one with no information. It seems as if when I call the second session_start() it is literally starting a new session and not recalling the current session.
I try to do my research to give as much info as possible and not waist people's time. Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Odd is that this was working a few days ago and then I started making changes to files deeper into the program and this happened. So I made the test.php just to find out more about the transfer problems.

Answer 1

You cannot call session_start() once any data or whitespace has been output to the browser.
In the code you posted, you are calling echo "token: $token, token1: $token1, row[1]: $row[1], row2: $row[2] "; prior to calling session_start() which will not start the session.
Add error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors', 1); to the beginning of your script and you should see a warning about not being able to start the session because output has already been sent.
Try moving the session_start(); call to the very beginning of the file.