An Introduction To PHP Sessions
Can I Store An Array In A Session?
Sure, this is simply done in the same way as setting regular variables.
Let’s create a new page1.php with the following code:
Listing 11 page1.php
// begin the session session_start(); // create an array $my_array=array('cat', 'dog', 'mouse', 'bird', 'crocodile', 'wombat', 'koala', 'kangaroo'); // put the array in a session variable $_SESSION['animals']=$my_array; // a little message to say we have done it echo 'Putting array into a session variable';
Now that we have the array $my_array in a session variable called $_SESSION['animals'] we can have a look through the array as we choose. Use this snippet to create a new page2.php file:
Listing 12 page2.php
// begin the session session_start(); // loop through the session array with foreach foreach($_SESSION['animals'] as $key=>$value) { // and print out the values echo 'The value of $_SESSION['."'".$key."'".'] is '."'".$value."'".' <br />'; }
The result of the above code will show you the session array, with the array keys.
Listing 13 Browser output from page2.php (listing-13.txt)
The value of $_SESSION['0'] is 'cat'
The value of $_SESSION['1'] is 'dog'
The value of $_SESSION['2'] is 'mouse'
The value of $_SESSION['3'] is 'bird'
The value of $_SESSION['4'] is 'crocodile'
The value of $_SESSION['5'] is 'wombat'
The value of $_SESSION['6'] is 'koala'
The value of $_SESSION['7'] is 'kangaroo'You could of course, simply choose individual array members if your page2.php file looked like this..
Listing 14 page2.php
// begin the session session_start(); // echo a single member of the array echo $_SESSION['animals'][3];
This would simply retrieve the value for the 4th member of the array and print bird.