#49432 [Com]: $_SESSION cannot store objects and resources

ID: 49432 Comment by: preinheimer at gmail dot com Reported By: jost dot boekemeier at googlemail dot com Status: Open Bug Type: Documentation problem Operating System: Any PHP Version: Irrelevant New Comment: Objects can in fact be stored in sessions. They are serialized for storage, the __sleep() and __wakeup() magic methods have been created to add functionality to the process. Clarification regarding resources could be added to the current note on references to make things more clear. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2009-09-01 17:14:26] jost dot boekemeier at googlemail dot com Description: ------------ The session documentation does not make it clear that PHP cannot (logically and in its current implementation) store objects or resources. This lack of specification makes it hard for external libraries to respond to bug reports like this one: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=13840&edit=1. (BTW: In bug#13840 Mr. Holzgreve states that "php sessions can store every PHP data type including objects". This is clearly WRONG and shows that even PHP devs don't understand the PHP scripting language.) We've had a similar bug report for the PHP/Java Bridge. This person wanted to store a Java object into the session. Please add the following to the _SESSION documentation: "PHP sessions can only store PHP /values/, for example exact or inexact numbers. They *cannot* store any other PHP data types, including resources and objects. If you want to store complex data in the session, serialize the data into a string value first." Please note that I have filed this as a documentation bug, not a bug in the PHP implementation. Reproduce code: --------------- <?php class X { var $destroyed; function __sleep() { echo "s"; if ($this->destroyed) { echo("\nerror: destroyed"); sleep (10); exit(1);} /*not reached*/ } function __destruct() { echo "d"; $this->destroyed = true; } function __construct() { echo "c"; $this->destroyed = false; } } session_start(); $x= new X(); $_SESSION["X"]=$x; ?> Expected result: ---------------- The above script should not call __destruct() before __sleep(); Actual result: -------------- __destruct() is called before __sleep() ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=49432&edit=1