Session Variables, welcome messages

Question

Why does this not work? My welcome message, it just doesn't show up:

<p>Welcome <cfoutput>#Recordset1.UserID#</cfoutput>.</p>

The session variable on the login page I created is:

<cflock timeout=999 scope="Session" type="Exclusive">
    <cfset Session.IDUsers =''>
</cflock>

is this incorrect? On the index page where I'm trying to display my welcome message I have:

<cfquery name="Recordset1" datasource="cfGossip">
  SELECT *
  FROM   users
  WHERE  users.IDUsers = <cfqueryparam value="#Session.IDUsers#">
</cfquery>

I'm not sure if this works, or is necessary?

Answer 1

If you set the userid stored in the session to be the empty string, when you query on it, you will only get users for whom the id is the empty string, which shouldn't be any of them. Therefore, the query is returning an empty set, and your page is (correctly) not displaying a user id.

How are you initially identifying the user? Are you querying against a database when they log in? Are you storing a cookie? Reading Tarot cards? For this to work, at some point, you have to store the correct userid, probably in the session. To do that, you need to first identify who the user is.

Also, if you are using CF6+, you probably do not need the cflock. It is now used to prevent race conditions, as CF is now thread-safe.

Answer 2

Hi Bridget, Looks like you're just starting with CF, welcome to the community.

My understanding of your code makes the structure look like the following, if I'm understanding you correctly:

<cfset session.idUsers = '' />
<cfquery datasource = "cfgossip" name = "recordset1">
SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE USERS.ID_USERS = <cfqueryparam cfsqltype = "cf_sql_integer" value = "#session.idUsers# />
</cfquery>
<cfoutput>Welcome #recordset1.userID#</cfoutput>

The reason this doesn't work is because your session.idUsers value is blank. Assuming you have a user in your database with an ID_USERS value of 1, you could change the CFSET to look like and it should return results.

Additionally, while it's great to see you using CFQUERYPARAM, I'd recommend including a CFSQLTYPE attribute in the tag whenever possible to provide an added line of defense against injection attacks. You can check out http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/help.html?content=Tags%5Fp-q%5F18.html to see the list of available types.

Answer 3

Is there anywhere in your code where you set your session.IDUsers? You initialize it as a blank ''. Coldfusion does not populate it for you. The session scope is a place that will remember things for that user that you put there for a specified period of time inactivity, usually 20 minutes. So hopefully, somewhere before you run your query you have additional logic that fills that in, otherwise you are asking the database for a user named, ''.

This is just a point of style, but the following may work better for you:

<cfset Session.IDUsers =''>

<!--- Do something here to populate Session.IDUsers --->

<!--- Creates a blank query - not necessary, but can reduce errors later --->
<cfset Recordset1 = queryNew("UserID")>

<!--- Populate the query from the database --->
<cfquery name="Recordset1" datasource="cfGossip">
  SELECT *
  FROM   users
  WHERE  users.IDUsers = <cfqueryparam value="#Session.IDUsers#">
</cfquery>

<!--- If the query has data, use it, otherwise show generic message --->
<cfoutput>
<cfif Recordset1.recordcount>
    <p>Welcome #Recordset1.UserID#.</p>
<cfelse>
    <p>Welcome new user!</p>
</cfif>
</cfoutput>

<!--- OR since we used queryNew("userID"), we can simplify without throwing an error. ---->
<cfoutput>
    <p>Welcome <cfif len(Recordset1.userID)>#Recordset1.userID#.<cfelse>new user!</cfif></p>
</cfoutput>

Putting the cfoutput outside the paragraph block will make it easier if you have additional variables to insert into the text. (but will work either way)

Regardless of all that, unless you forgot to share a bit more of the code, I think the issue is that the session.IDUsers is blank and needs to be populated before the query. I hope this helps!