Include CodeIgniter/Php web application within a genreated php page - php

Question

The context:
I have a web application (e-commerce in few steps) written in php, I am writing a new version with CodeIgniter.
I have to include it within php pages generated by a CMS (sitezen).
/* generated html */
<?php include('my_app/index.php); ?>
/* generated html */
I cannot do anything about the CMS part, like working with an other one...
My problem:
With I cannot start the session before the header has been sent, I also get warnings when using the session but I can disable them.
My Workaround:
I didn't find any help relevant to my problem. The only workaround I could think of for the old php version is to send an ajax request to a php file starting the session.
This is working but there might be a better/cleaner solution, and I don't know how to do it with the CodeIgniter version.
I'd like to avoid using Iframes too!
If anyone knows a way to do it, or has any hint, it will be highly appreciated!

Answer 1

CodeIgniter is a good framework for doing everything in it (as most frameworks), but doesn't like being 'included' from outside.
Why do you need to include him into a different CMS? You may do the CMS in CodeIgniter (that's the base purporse of CodeIgniter), or the e-commerce in sitezen.
If it is because of the surrounding styles, the best it occurs to me is to have it coded also in CodeIgniter. That's not great because you have to mantain styles twice, but it is one of the cleanest ways of achieving what you want.
Warnings are there because of a reason: disabling them does not prevent the result from happening.
What happens to you is that you try to start a session that has already been started. In order to avoid that, you must give the second session a different name from the first. (In a call previous to session_start(), you'll want to call session_name().
Bad news are that once a session has been started, previous data from the session is no longer accesible, so if the CMS stores stuff in the session on __destruct(), the $_SESSION array where it stores the new data in will not be the same $_SESSION() used at the beginning of the CMS bootstrap.
And if you don't start a second session, you'll mix the CodeIgniter and sitezen variables inside the same array (beware of name collisions).
Code like this will NOT work (so, nesting sessions / restoring sessions is, as far as I know, not possible):
<?php
function show() {
echo "We are on [{$_SESSION['name']}] <br />\n";
}
session_name('SUPERSESSION'); session_start();
$_SESSION['name'] = "Super";
session_name('SESSION_ONE'); session_start();
$_SESSION['name'] = "ONE";
show(); # We are on [ONE]
session_destroy();
session_name('SESSION_TWO'); session_start();
$_SESSION['name'] = "TWO";
show(); # We are on [TWO]
session_destroy();
session_name('SESSION_ONE'); session_start();
show(); # We are on [empty] <- resume sessions does not work
session_destroy();
show(); # We are on [empty] <- nested sessions dont work
session_destroy();
To avoid headers already sent warning, start your code with ob_start() in your index.php, and ob_end_flush() at the end

Answer 2

Can't really be done without hacking the CMS considerably.
A CMS provides you with tools to do a specific job, so you are restricted to the CMS capabilities. Similiarly CI is a framework to help develop apps.
do you really have to include it within the CMS pages?
Why not create a link like:
site.com/my_store_app/codeigniter-stuff
then just link to it from within the CMS. You can reuse the existing template, so visually it will look like it's "within" the CMS, but you will be able to eliminate all these other problems.
You're essentially taking two completely different systems and attempting to stick them together.

Answer 3

I'm not sure if it would work for you but you could decide to include them trough curl. Another option is to include the pages directly. Do note that I'm not sure if this would work but if it does you won't be able to send PHP variables to it except trough the link.
include('http://www.example.com/codeigniter/controller/method/id');
Try this. If it works you can do something like this to control it:
include('http://www.example.com/codeigniter/'. $controller .'/'. $method .'/'. $id);
Note: sessions won't work on this method. If you really want sessions to work your best bet would be to separate the applications.
www.example.com <-- your cms
www.example.com/store <-- your webstore in CI