pop-session

The popphp/pop-session component provides the functionality to manage sessions.

Installation

Install it directly into your project:

composer require popphp/pop-session

Or, include it in your composer.json file:

{
    "require": {
        "popphp/pop-session": "^3.4.1"
    }
}

Basic Use

The session component gives you multiple ways to interact with the $_SESSION variable and store and retrieve data to it. The following are supported:

• Managing basic sessions and session values

• Creating namespaced sessions

• Setting session value expirations

• Setting request-based session values

Basic Sessions

$sess = Pop\Session\Session::getInstance();
$sess->user_id    = 1001;
$sess['username'] = 'admin';

The above snippet saves values to the user’s session. To recall it later, you can access the session like this:

$sess = Pop\Session\Session::getInstance();
echo $sess->user_id;    // echos out 1001
echo $sess['username']; // echos out 'admin'

And to destroy the session and its values, you can call the kill() method:

$sess = Pop\Session\Session::getInstance();
$sess->kill();

Namespaced Sessions

Namespaced sessions allow you to store session under a namespace to protect and preserve that data away from the normal session data.

$sessFoo = new Pop\Session\SessionNamespace('foo');
$sessFoo->bar = 'baz'

What’s happening “under the hood” is that an array is being created with the key foo in the main $_SESSION variable and any data that is saved or recalled by the foo namespaced session object will be stored in that array.

$sessFoo = new Pop\Session\SessionNamespace('foo');
echo $sessFoo->bar; // echos out 'baz'

$sess = Pop\Session\Session::getInstance();
echo $sess->bar; // echos out null, because it was only stored in the namespaced session

And you can unset a value under a session namespace like this:

$sessFoo = new Pop\Session\SessionNamespace('foo');
unset($sessFoo->bar);

Session Value Expirations

Both basic sessions and namespaced sessions support timed values used to “expire” a value stored in session.

$sess = Pop\Session\Session::getInstance();
$sess->setTimedValue('foo', 'bar', 60);

The above example will set the value for foo with an expiration of 60 seconds. That means that if another request is made after 60 seconds, foo will no longer be available in session.

Request-Based Session Values

Request-based session values can be stored as well, which sets a number of time, or “hops”, that a value is available in session. This is useful for flash messaging. Both basic sessions and namespaced sessions support request-based session values.

$sess = Pop\Session\Session::getInstance();
$sess->setRequestValue('foo', 'bar', 3);

The above example will allow the value for foo to be available to the user for 3 requests. After the 3rd request, foo will no longer be available in session. The default value of “hops” is 1.