Custom Session Handlers in PHP4 Page 5

Our 6 functions will now work against a MySQL database:

1. sess_open($sess_path, $session_name);
   We need to connect to the MySQL database here using mysql_pconnect(),
   and then selecting the session database using mysql_select_db(). The
   $sess_path and $session_name parameters are irrelevant but we have
   to keep them.
2. sess_close();
   We are opening a persistent connection to MySQL so we don’t do anything
   in this function.
3. sess_read($key);
   A simple SELECT statement will do the trick, we want to read the
   session data for the given key, and we can specify that the expiry
   timestamp must be in the future.
4. sess_write($key, $val);
   Writing a session is a little bit trickier. We first try to save the
   session into the database using an INSERT statement. If that fails
   (from a Primary Key constraint) then that means the key already exists,
   so then we have to write an UPDATE statement instead.
5. sess_destroy($key);
   Destroying a session is easy, we just delete the session key from
   the database.
6. sess_gc($maxlifetime);
   Garbage collection is easy as well, we just have to delete all the
   expired sessions (where the expiry timestamp is in the past) from
   the database.

Now we’ve got a MySQL session handler, pretty easy wasn’t it?

Conclusion

This concludes this little tutorial, hopefully you have a good feel for how to
extend the session handling functions in PHP4. The examples here are just simple
ones to demonstrate how you would do it, extend them to accomodate your needs and
if you find any bugs, please let me know 🙂