Session Management (Zend Framework specific)

Question

I'm trying to get the rememberMe() function to remember users and retain sessions for months at a time.

I've read that if you pass a value through rememberMe() it will not work if the session has already been started. From the session_set_cookie_params() documentation in the PHP manual, "you need to call session_set_cookie_params() for every request and before session_start() is called."

By I am calling Zend_session::start() in my bootstrap as i thought I was supposed to. My problem is that rememberMe() doesn't seem to be working.

When I call session_get_cookie_params(); I get:

Array([lifetime] => 0 [path] => / [domain] => [secure] => httponly] =>)

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Don't use the start() method. It should work fine if you are using MVC. The session_start must be called before any output is send and that's right before sending response (because of outputbuffering). The session is started automatically upon first Zend_Session_namespace usage.

Answer 2

I've solved the problem. sessions were being erased by another website on the same server which expires sessions every 24 minutes. To fix this I set the session.save_path to a new folder. I also set session.gc_maxlifetime and session.cookie_lifetime to be very large numbers.

problem solved!