Question about Session variables

Just looking for some advice to see if I'm doing something remotely correctly with Sessions.... (not something I use too often)

I basically have a simple enough database structure with two tables:

Lodges - LodgeID, Lodge, etc
Nominations - NominationID, Nomination, LodgeID, etc

A one-to-many relationship, with each Lodge being able to have multiple Nominations.

So I have a Lodge Details page, which shows the details of a selected Lodge, and a little table listing the Nominations its had.

On this page I have a link to add a new Nomination, which should pick up the LodgeID of the current Lodge, so that the new Nomination is tied to the current Lodge.

So on my Lodge details page I have a session created using:

<?php
if (!session_id()) session_start();
if (!isset($_SESSION["Lodge_ID_Number"])) {
$_SESSION["Lodge_ID_Number"] = "".$row_WADAlodges['LodgeID'] ."";
}
?>

On my Add Nomination page I have a hidden field that calls up the $_SESSION["Lodge_ID_Number"]:

<input type="hidden" name="LodgeID" id="LodgeID" value="<?php echo $_SESSION['Lodge_ID_Number']; ?>" />

And on my Nomination Added page I use unset to clear that Session using:

<?php
unset($_SESSION['Lodge_ID_Number']);
?>

Hope that all makes sense.... it does seem to work, but I'm just interested to know if that's the best way of doing this, or if there's a better way?

The thing that's bugging me is what would happen if the user got as far as the Add Nomination page, and then hit the back button, went to a different Lodge, before the Session variable is cleared which might cause problems?

i think i would use URL variables instead of using session variables.


the lodge detail page is loaded using a URL Variable:

for example:
detail.php?id=33

nomination.php?id=33

pass that URL Variable to the nomination page, and then store the URL variable in the form element instead of the session

Thanks Jason - is that just using <?php $_GET['LodgeID']; ?> ?

(sorry about the duplicate post by the way - didn't realise I'd done that.)

that would be correct assuming that LodgeID is the name of the URL variable used to load the details page:

detail.php?LodgeID=33

Sorry Jason - I'm missing something somewhere....

I have a page listing lodges, and the link through the details page ends:

../lodgeDetails.php?LodgeID=438

So the LodgeID is the URL variable?

But I'm missing how to pass that variable from the LodgeDetails page to the AddNomination page.

I've tried echoing it out using:

<?php echo $_GET['LodgeID']; ?>

But it draws a blank, so isn't being passed.

so on the lodgeDetails page, the link to the add nomination page would look like this:

<a href="AddNomination.php?LodgeID=<?php echo($_GET['LodgeID']); ?>">Add Nomination</a>

Thanks Jason. I think I had always used that going from a results page to a details page, which is set up to pull through the ID to display the details based on the recordset.

But in this case there is no recordset on the AddNomination page, so didn't realise you could use it as simply there too.

One last question on this - my form action is:

<form method="post" id="form1" action="<?php echo KT_escapeAttribute(KT_getFullUri()); ?>">

And then the link to a NominationAdded page is in the php code at the top of the AddNomination page:

$ins_nominations->registerTrigger("END", "Trigger_Default_Redirect", 99, "NominationAdded.php");

What would be useful would be to pass the URL variable through again, so that on the NominationAdded page I can have a link back to the same Lodge to add another Nomination without finding the Lodge again.

But I'm not sure what the syntax would be, as it included some PHP within existing PHP, so not just:

$ins_nominations->registerTrigger("END", "Trigger_Default_Redirect", 99, "nominationAdded.php?LodgeID=echo($_GET['LodgeID'])");

I assume this must be possible, but not sure of the exact syntax?

i think the correct syntax would be:

$ins_nominations->registerTrigger("END", "Trigger_Default_Redirect", 99, "nominationAdded.php?LodgeID=".$_GET['LodgeID']."");

Thanks Jason - that's working great now. Although now I have a quick question on an SQL Join (posted in Data Assist section)