Php – passing session id via url

ini-setphpsessionurl

I'm trying to get my script to use url session id instead of cookies.
The following page is not picking up the variable in the url as the session id.
I must be missing something.

First page http://www.website.com/start.php

ini_set("session.use_cookies",0);
ini_set("session.use_trans_sid",1);
session_start();
$session_id = session_id();
header("location: target.php?session_id=". $session_id );

Following page – http://www.website.com/target.php?session_id=rj3ids98dhpa0mcf3jc89mq1t0

ini_set("session.use_cookies",0);
ini_set("session.use_trans_sid",1);
print_r($_SESSION);
print(session_id())

Result is a different session id and the session is blank.

Array ( [debug] => no ) pt1t38347bs6jc9ruv2ecpv7o2

Best Solution

be careful when using the url to pass session ids, that could lead to session hijacking via the referer!

Examples

Roger Pate

This is my name, which is an identifier. It is like a URI, but cannot be a URL, as it tells you nothing about my location or how to contact me. In this case it also happens to identify at least 5 other people in the USA alone.

4914 West Bay Street, Nassau, Bahamas

This is a locator, which is an identifier for that physical location. It is like both a URL and URI (since all URLs are URIs), and also identifies me indirectly as "resident of..". In this case it uniquely identifies me, but that would change if I get a roommate.

I say "like" because these examples do not follow the required syntax.

Popular confusion

From Wikipedia:

In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a subset of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI, ... [emphasis mine]

Because of this common confusion, many products and documentation incorrectly use one term instead of the other, assign their own distinction, or use them synonymously.

URNs

My name, Roger Pate, could be like a URN (Uniform Resource Name), except those are much more regulated and intended to be unique across both space and time.

Because I currently share this name with other people, it's not globally unique and would not be appropriate as a URN. However, even if no other family used this name, I'm named after my paternal grandfather, so it still wouldn't be unique across time. And even if that wasn't the case, the possibility of naming my descendants after me make this unsuitable as a URN.

URNs are different from URLs in this rigid uniqueness constraint, even though they both share the syntax of URIs.

Javascript – Encode URL in JavaScript

Check out the built-in function encodeURIComponent(str) and encodeURI(str).
In your case, this should work:

var myOtherUrl = 
       "http://example.com/index.html?url=" + encodeURIComponent(myUrl);

Best Solution

Related Solutions

The difference between a URI, a URL and a URN

Examples

Popular confusion

URNs

Javascript – Encode URL in JavaScript

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