Losing PHP $_SESSION data

[CygnusX]

I'm storing an array inside of a session variable, and for some reason, the data is being lost when I change from page to page.  All other data remains, but the session data for my stored array seems to vanish.  What makes this even more odd to me is that the session can hold the data on my home PC, but not my server....

Any ideas?

[Chris]

session_start();

Make sure no links point to another subdomain like www.something.com and something.com use different sessions.

[CygnusX]

I wish it were that easy : P

I've got this at the top of the page:

session_start();
global $_SESSION;
global $_GET;

further down i have something similar to:

if(empty($_SESSION['NumTrades']))
{

   $rand_keys = array_rand($Item, 5);

   $_SESSION['TrueValue'] = 0;
   $_SESSION['Offer'] = 0;
   $_SESSION['NumTrades'] = 1;
   $_SESSION['Gold'] = 0;
   
   $MyItems = array();
   $MyItems[0] = $rand_keys[0];
   $MyItems[1] = $rand_keys[1];
   $MyItems[2] = $rand_keys[2];
   $MyItems[3] = $rand_keys[3];
   $MyItems[4] = $rand_keys[4];
   
   $_SESSION['Item'] = $MyItems;

}

Where $Item is a large array of items => values.

I then have links on the page that are self referencing (ie, index.php?id=4), and when I do this, the value in $_SESSION['NumTrades'] will echo just fine...  but the value in $_SESSION['Item'] is getting lost.

[CygnusX]

No real solution, but I found a work around.

PHP did not like me declaring $Item and $_SESSION['Item'].  I changed $_SESSION['Item'] to $_SESSION['MyItem'], and it works.  Very odd.

[Nox]

The change of name ... I expect this is only a part of code... isn't it possible that it gets overwritten somewhere?
What if you'd have $MyItem and $_SESSION['Item'] ?

[CygnusX]

It was very short code... only 400 lines with 50 of those lines dedicated to making the $Items array.  It was not being overwritten as the code worked just fine on my local machine, but failed once I moved it to the server.  All code was contained in 1 file (part of the micro economics competition that Chris posted).  I changed all 4 instances of $_SESSION['Item'] to $_SESSION['MyItem'], and all problems were solved.  PHP version 5.2.4.

[Winawer]

Is register_globals on?

[Nox]

Might be headshot

[CygnusX]

register_globals is on.

[Nox]

Yea, headshot... register_globals is meh thing... basicly exports $_(SESSION|POST|GET|...) so $_SESSION["Item"] is availible as $Item... same for all others, creating total mess. As you can see, http://php.net/manual/en/security.globals.php it's already deprecated, will probably be removed

[CygnusX]

That makes sense.  When I went back and did a foreach($_SESSION['Item'] as $Key => $Value) to dig into what was happening, it listed everything in $Item, which seemed completely out of left field.

I guess register_globals must work in both directions then; letting $_SESSION['Item'] overwrite $Item, and vice versa.  I can't believe in 6 years this is the first time I've come across this problem.   Either that, or my server has changed settings.  Very very weird.