Re: what vars should go in session vars?

I'm working on a web app myself, in my spare time, and I came across the same questions as yourself a while ago. In the end, I decided to design my app so that I have User objects, which I can then store as session variables, meaning I can store the user Name, ID, preferences, etc, and then pass it from page to page. I'm still implentating most of my code, so I'm afraid I cant tgive much feedback on performance issues on it, but I find it to be nice solution to the problem. That said, I'll prob be posting here in about 3 weeks complaining that none of my code works or something. Good luck with you app anyway, whatever approach you decide on.. Conor On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 01:29:46PM -0500, Erik Price wrote: > Hello, I have a question about everyone's opinion on the topic of > sessions: > > I am running the whole linux/mysql/php/apache thing and I love it. If I > haven't mentioned it before, I'm teaching myself how to do all this with > a web-based app (site) that combines a great deal of functionality, such > as searching a database of images, requesting projects from my > department, checking the status of those projects, and message boards > (where the topic is a certain project -- each project has a message > board). Blah blah blah. > > What I'm wondering is, what should I store in session variables? > Originally, I was thinking that after login/authentication, only the > userID number should be stored in the session, because this number can > easily be used to consult MySQL and get any other information necessary > for the user, to influence the way the site behaves. But I was thinking > of adding ten pre-set style sheets (diff't colors, fonts, etc), and the > user can choose one of them and store it in "users.stylesheet" or > whatever. (A neat idea if I do say so myself.) > > But would this would mean yet ANOTHER query to the database for every > single page in the site, as the userID is checked to find the user's > stylesheet, which then causes the page to perform an include() on that > particular style sheet, etc. Would it be more efficient to store > another session variable for the style sheet preference, rather than > pulling out of the DB on every page? That way it would be one less > query to the database. The first way is simpler, but the second way > seems more optimized. > > But then this could be taken farther -- where do you draw the line with > user preferences that are pulled out of the database each time they are > needed, or user preferences that are stored in a session to save > database activity? > > Since I have never written a database application before, I have no idea > what kinds of performance changes occur with making sitewide adjustments > like this. In other words, do -most- database-driven web sites store a > ton of info in the session variable, or do they depend on the database > itself to serve up this information on a page-by-page basis? > > Note that this setup is being run on Pentium II, 256MB RAM with approx > 50 users total (only ten or so would ever be accessing the thing > simultaneously, I imagine). It's not a public web site. > > Thanks for your thoughts, > > Erik > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net >