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Working with Sessions

FEAST includes some out of the box session management capabilities to make working with user sessions easier.

Session config options

FEAST contains the following config parameters for sessions:

1. session.name - The name of the session. Defaults to Feast_Session.
2. session.timeout - The time in seconds for the session. Defaults to 0 (when browser closes).
3. session.strictIp - boolean value. If set to true, then the session will be destroyed and a redirect issued to the same URL as requested if the IP does not match.

Retrieving the session

The session is placed into the service container and can be retrieved in one of two ways. First, it can be passed by direct injection into methods through Dependency Injection. The parameter must be type hinted as \Feast\Session\Session. Secondly, it can be retrieved by calling the global di function with \Feast\Session\Session::class as the only argument.

Session namespacing

FEAST makes use of namespaces for sessions. The following session namespaces are used by the framework and are not recommended for user interaction:

1. Feast
2. FlashMessage

Any other namespace can be retrieved by calling getNamespace on an instance of the Session class. This method returns a stdClass, and will create it if it is empty.

The method destroyNamespace will unset an entire namespace, removing all items in that namespace.

Flash Messages

Flash messages are one time use messages that are wiped automatically upon retrieval. This allows easily showing an error message or success message on a redirect, for example.

The Flash Message namespace is not interfaced with through the session class. Rather, two static methods are provided.

Storing a message

FlashMessage::setMessage takes two string parameters. A name and a value to be stored.

Retrieving and erasing a message

FlashMessage::getMessage takes a name parameter, checks if the message exists, and returns it if so, after erasing it from the session.

If no message is found, null is returned.