Re: Session Array Disappears

Richard Lynch wrote:

I'm thinking the guy who suggested ignore_user_abort(TRUE) is just doing Voodoo Programming :-) It may or may not be something you want, but I doubt it will have any affect whatsoever on your posted problem. Actually, I think anywhere that somebody thinks they need ignore_user_abort, they probably should re-structure the application to handle the long-running process in a cron job or some other asynchronous manner, rather than try to keep a script running tied to an HTTP connection that isn't useful anymore. In other words: Move the long-running slow heavy lifting computation OUT of the web page generation part, so that your user gets a web page super fast in the first place, and so the long-running part can get done later, when the user isn't stuck waiting around for it. Your basic Human Interface principle, which is apparently going to be called Web 2.0 now. :-) On Mon, April 24, 2006 9:09 pm, Webmaster wrote:

Hello, Thank you for the reply. Interesting function. I have not heard of that one previously. I've read the manual pages for it.....If I understand ignore_user_abort(TRUE)...you are thinking that maybe the user is being disconnected (using stop button or having ISP issues) prior to the script finishing and therefore the script does not have a chance to create the array? I'm wondering if that would be true, since later in the same script, it generates an email to inform me someone's submission was lost because the array did not exist. I'm confused how it could stop executing the middle of the script (step 4a and 5 below) but yet execute the end of the script (the final step in the code below)? I was first made aware of this issue because of the email, so I think the end of the script is executing. Thanks, R Al wrote:

add a ignore_user_abort(TRUE) first thing in your code.

Hello, The site I'm working on works like this... Requires a login that uses sessions to remember username and email address. Upon being verified, the user is presented with a page that displays several questions regarding their background. Upon submitting the background page, a script checks to make sure all background questions were answered. If not, the page is redisplayed with a warning to answer all questions. If they are all present, a second page is displayed asking about a specific topic. Submitting the second page calls up the code provided below. In reading the www.php.net/manual/en/ref.session.php page, I'd like to point out we do not use cookies. The session id is propagated in the URL (although it's not visible in the URL bar). Also, session.gc_maxlifetime is set to 5400. We are using PHP 4.3.4. Not very often, but once in a while, I'll get an email warning me that a submission was denied because $_SESSION['Q'] is empty. I'm wondering, hoping and/or praying that someone out there can look at this small script and let me know if I'm doing something wrong with the built in function array_pop, perhaps I don't understand sessions at all or perhaps it is a server issue. It's very confusing because other session variables (name and email from the login page) are not emptied, just $_SESSION['Q']. Here's my code with some documentation: <?php /* $_SESSION['startQA'] contains 11 elements and is generated by a previous page in the site. Once the visitor clicks the page two submit button, the above SESSION variable comes into play again. This script takes that array of elements and does the following: 1. Assign session array to local array 2. Removes the last elemental value using array_pop 3. Removes the last elemental value using array_pop 4. Assign local variable the value of the a POST element 4a. Create a new session array and populates the first element equal to POST element 5. Runs through and populates the remaining 9 elements 5a. Total of 10 elements are now populated, 0 thru 9 6. Double checks the existence of each element 6a. if an element is missing, email me a warning and end program */ //Assign Session array to local variable // Step 1 $thisQarray = $_SESSION['startQA']; //Remove the last element of the original array // Step 2 $area = array_pop($thisQarray); //Remove last element of bgq array and assign to taking_test_at // Step 3 $from_location = array_pop($thisQarray); //Assign test version to variable // Step 4 $testVersion = $_POST['version']; //Start building the final Session Array // Step 4a $_SESSION['Q'] = array($testVersion); //Populate rest of Session Array // Step 5 for ($newBGQCounter=0; $newBGQCounter<count($thisQarray); $newBGQCounter++) { $_SESSION['Q'][$newBGQCounter+1] = $thisQarray[$newBGQCounter]; } //test for existense of session array elements if ( ($_SESSION['Q'][0] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][1] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][2] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][3] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][4] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][5] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][6] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][7] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][8] == "") OR ($_SESSION['Q'][9] == "") ) { SEND ME AN ERROR EMAIL END PROGRAM } ?>

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Richard: normally your advice is good and you've helped me several times in the past. However, I'm not sure you are correct this time.

I've had great success for programs that have my users uploading image files. Prior to adding ignore_user_abort(TRUE) they became impatient and closed the connection, thus truncating the process. The docs say explicitly in "Connection handling" "If you do not tell PHP to ignore a user abort and the user aborts, your script will terminate." All that having been said, adding ignore_user_abort(TRUE) won't hurt a thing and may solve his problem.