Object can not be used after a session

Hi I was wondering if anybody has any Ideas about or has experienced
this....

I create a new object and then assign it to a session var

$customer = new Customer($_GET['facilityID'], $_GET['customerID']);
$_SESSION['acceptPayment']['customer'] = $customer;

but later when I access that session var [in the the same file but in a different function and different instance], php gives me
an error saying:

"The script tried to execute a methode or access a property of an incomplete object. Pleas ensure that the class definition
lt;bgt;customerlt;/bgt; of the object you are trying to operate on was loaded _before_ the session was started
at <filepath>/acceptPayment.php line 103"

I did a little reading (rtfm) on php.net and saw that if session.auto_start is turned on, you couldn't use Objects with
sessions. Well I checked my ini and the session.auto_start was set to 0, so I am now scratching my head in confusion.

I require_once the Customer class and start the session after the requires and includes, so then I thought ok require_once
so I change it to require and then it doesn't load the class the for some reason (sigh).

Thanks for your help in advance
Matt

It turns out when I was assigning the object to the session var, the object was not getting
serialized. Serializing takes a variable and makes it into a string describing the variable and
the value. This could be done for any variable type except Resources (MySQL connection vars) and
Results (the result from a query).

Serialization happens automatically through the session_register() function, but you can only
use session_register if the the register_globals is turned on in the ini. I would like to move away
from the the practice of using globals and eventually turn off the register_globals.

For some reason I tried to register my $customer object using the session_register("customer") and
that seem to fail (not the actual registering, but the reuse of the object) so now this is a solution that I
saw in the php documentation:

$customer = new Customer($_GET['facilityID'], $_GET['customerID']);
$_SESSION['acceptPayment']['serializedCustomer'] = serialize($customer);

so now when I have moved on to another page or another instance of the same page and
I want to access the object from the session var, I do so like this:

$customer = unserialize($_SESSION['acceptPayment']['serializedCustomer']);

and now you can access the object. There is a hidden jewl about this method, I now no longer
have to include or require the class file because it is already defined in the serialized string.

Matt

Matt Silva wrote:
> Hi I was wondering if anybody has any Ideas about or has experienced
> this....
>
> I create a new object and then assign it to a session var
>
> $customer = new Customer($_GET['facilityID'], $_GET['customerID']);
> $_SESSION['acceptPayment']['customer'] = $customer;
>
> but later when I access that session var [in the the same file but in a
> different function and different instance], php gives me an error saying:
>
> "The script tried to execute a methode or access a property of an
> incomplete object. Pleas ensure that the class definition
> lt;bgt;customerlt;/bgt; of the object you are trying to operate on was
> loaded _before_ the session was started
> at <filepath>/acceptPayment.php line 103"
>
> I did a little reading (rtfm) on php.net and saw that if
> session.auto_start is turned on, you couldn't use Objects with
> sessions. Well I checked my ini and the session.auto_start was set to
> 0, so I am now scratching my head in confusion.
>
> I require_once the Customer class and start the session after the
> requires and includes, so then I thought ok require_once
> so I change it to require and then it doesn't load the class the for
> some reason (sigh).
>
> Thanks for your help in advance
> Matt
>

>$customer = new Customer($_GET['facilityID'], $_GET['customerID']);
>$_SESSION['acceptPayment']['serializedCustomer'] = serialize($customer);
>
>so now when I have moved on to another page or another instance of the
>same page and I want to access the object from the session var, I do so
>like this:
>
>$customer =
>unserialize($_SESSION['acceptPayment']['serializedCustomer']);
>
>and now you can access the object. There is a hidden jewl about this
>method, I now no longer have to include or require the class file because
>it is already defined in the serialized string.

Really, you don't need the serialize/unserialize in there, as they are
handled automagically. $_SESSION['customer'] = $customer; and
$customer = $_SESSION['customer'] should work just fine. I'm doing this
with 4.3.2, and a casual glance at my sess_* files in /tmp shows that the
objects are stored in serialized form and the __sleep() method is called
the usual way.

My understanding is that classes must be defined prior to unserializing an
object if you dan't want to risk having the object becoming disassociated
from its class, but your method above does have the advantage that you
decide when that serialization takes places and can load the classes
there, rather than having to do so prior to session_start().

http://www.php.net/manual/en/languag...ialization.php

---------------------------------------------------------------------
michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
sf/ca http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html

Wow thats strange?? I am using PHP 4.3.2 as well and I don't see that happening where
it serializes the object when assigning it to the $_SESSION. I am using the dbg
debugger and nusphere PHP editor and I can step through the code and as I do
it shows that the session var is not serialized. However when I checked the session
data in the /tmp directorie it appears to serialized

It could be that my version of PHP doesn't match the dbg version and dbg reporting back
false information (which I have to look into that). Also I checked my ini settings and
it shows the session.serialize_handler = php which should be default.

Another thing is that I didn't come accross in my reading of
http://www.php.net/manual/en/languag...ialization.php where it says that objects
assigned to the global $_SESSION var is automatically serialized. I did see that if you
use the session_register() function it automatically serializes but again I'd like
to avoid that.

Right now it seems I have many unkowns, so i'm going to narrow them down ....

Matt



Mike Migurski wrote:

>>$customer = new Customer($_GET['facilityID'], $_GET['customerID']);
>>$_SESSION['acceptPayment']['serializedCustomer'] = serialize($customer);
>>
>>so now when I have moved on to another page or another instance of the
>>same page and I want to access the object from the session var, I do so
>>like this:
>>
>>$customer =
>>unserialize($_SESSION['acceptPayment']['serializedCustomer']);
>>
>>and now you can access the object. There is a hidden jewl about this
>>method, I now no longer have to include or require the class file because
>>it is already defined in the serialized string.
>
>
> Really, you don't need the serialize/unserialize in there, as they are
> handled automagically. $_SESSION['customer'] = $customer; and
> $customer = $_SESSION['customer'] should work just fine. I'm doing this
> with 4.3.2, and a casual glance at my sess_* files in /tmp shows that the
> objects are stored in serialized form and the __sleep() method is called
> the usual way.
>
> My understanding is that classes must be defined prior to unserializing an
> object if you dan't want to risk having the object becoming disassociated
> from its class, but your method above does have the advantage that you
> decide when that serialization takes places and can load the classes
> there, rather than having to do so prior to session_start().
>
> http://www.php.net/manual/en/languag...ialization.php
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
> sf/ca http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html
>

>Wow thats strange?? I am using PHP 4.3.2 as well and I don't see that
>happening where it serializes the object when assigning it to the
>$_SESSION.

It doesn't do it when you assign it into the $_SESSION array, it does it
when the script completes and updated session data is written to the
session file. This actually caused me a lot of grief a while back, when
scripts were bombing out and session data was being lost - I ended up
writing another layer on top of the session that explicitly wrote crucial
data at critical junctures, rather than relying on the built-in support.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
sf/ca http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html

Hi Mike

Yes your right about when the session data is updated. The problem then
lies in when I try to read the object from the session var. I include at
the top of the file the class definition.

Not to get sidetracked but when you say you wrote another layer, are you
talking
about utilizing the __sleep() and __wakeup functions and then
serializing/unserializing
within those functions?

so far manually serialize-ing and unserialize-ing prior to assigning the
object and
after retrieving the object seems to work.

Matt

Mike Migurski wrote:

>>Wow thats strange?? I am using PHP 4.3.2 as well and I don't see that
>>happening where it serializes the object when assigning it to the
>>$_SESSION.
>>
>>
>
>It doesn't do it when you assign it into the $_SESSION array, it does it
>when the script completes and updated session data is written to the
>session file. This actually caused me a lot of grief a while back, when
>scripts were bombing out and session data was being lost - I ended up
>writing another layer on top of the session that explicitly wrote crucial
>data at critical junctures, rather than relying on the built-in support.
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
>sf/ca http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html
>
>
>