Can PHP and Servlets use the same session variables?

hi,

i'm guessing you're set on using sessions and can't use POST values, attach a variable to a URL or set a cookie. how do java servlets deal with sessions? i suppose you've tried doing session_start(); print_r($_SESSION); on the first php page after setting your session values in java?

loz

loz,

I have tried that and the only thing that is output is "Array()".  Do you know what that means?

The reason I want to use sessions is that I have a whole bunch of servlets already working together with sessions, and I wanted to try and integrate PHP into the application.

I have used POST values and appending variables to the URL and got it to work, but how the site is set up, it would be easier for me to be able to access the same session data from within PHP as from the servlets.

I have thought of creating a table in my database with all of the pertinent info, but that means a lot of updating, and I'm not sure I want to go down that road yet.

My site is set up using 2 frames; the sidebar and the workspace.  The sidebar consists of static html pages that change depending on who accesses the site, with the links calling a servlet to be displayed in the workspace.

I suppose I can just put the links to the PHP pages in the workspace area, but I wanted to avoid doing that to keep the site design the same.

Thoughts?  Thanks!
Craig

You should try using PHP's session_set_save_handler() function
http://php.net/manual/en/function.session-set-save-handler.php
Look at the example on this page, it's pretty good.

You pass in user-defined callback functions that get triggered during all the different session phases.  This completely overrides the file-based method of handling sessions which is the default in PHP.

The tricky part will be creating an interface within your java app that allows PHP to get/set session variables.  Maybe you want to use XML/RPC, or straight sockets.  Or maybe you want to use PHP's java integration functions (http://php.net/manual/en/ref.java.php).

It would help if you could let us know how Java handles sessions.

If you change the session like shmert says you could store the information in a database.
Then you should be able to work with that data from your servlets.
Perhaps servlets can also handle custom sessions and thus you can share the same session.

Thanks shmert and Oliver.

Shmert - I found someone in house who has played around with your suggestions and so far it looks promising.

Oliver - This is what I was going to do, but I needed confirmation first.

Thanks a bunch guys!

Craig