session id

[AJ]

hey,
i am also doing (trying and failing actually) sessions in my php advertising system.

I saw somewhere that you have to do the following code to pass the session id to the next script:
(call it, create it as a variable, then you would do on the link: script.php?phpsessid=$phpsessid)

$phpsessid=session_id( );

Is this right? Because I have also heard in a few places that it passes the session id automatically..
I am really stuck on sessions at the moment, so any help would be great.
Thanks very much.
-aj

[freddydoesphp]

AJ, you are using PHP4, no??? Once you call session_start();
at the top of the page the session is initialized, and the variable $PHPSESSID is available to you. Or whatever name is assigned to the session.name directive in your php.ini file. If the user has cookies turned on, then a cookie will be placed on their comp with the value of the session id and a file will be created on the server to hold the serialized session data. It also is the case that the first time you initialize a session the $PHPSESSID doesn't appear to be present it is isn't until the page gets reloaded or you link to another page where you have a session_start() that it will show up if you were trying to print it out.

The only reason you would need to append the $PHPSESSID to the end of the url is so you could allow people without cookies to use sessions on your site. YOu can compile your PHP with the --enable-trans-sid flag which will automatically append the $PHPSESSID to a url when cookies aren't allowed on a users' computer. Most pre-compiled win binaries have it done for you, but if not its really easy to recompile your own version for Linux.