Explain please...in plain english

[xited1@cox.net]

So I'm guilty of copying and pasting or writing code that I don't fully understand, I just know it's supposed to do something from all the books and tutorials and forum posts. I have this one snippet of code that I would like someone to explain to me what all the characters are for and what exactly the code is supposed to do. Can someone help me out here? (I do know the session start part of it...imagine that!)

<?
session_start();  
if (@$_SESSION['auth'] != "yes")

{
	header("Location: register.php");
	exit();
}  
  
?>

[hoopyfrood]

Originally Posted by xited1@cox.net

So I'm guilty of copying and pasting or writing code that I don't fully understand, I just know it's supposed to do something from all the books and tutorials and forum posts. I have this one snippet of code that I would like someone to explain to me what all the characters are for and what exactly the code is supposed to do. Can someone help me out here? (I do know the session start part of it...imagine that!)

<?
session_start();  
if (@$_SESSION['auth'] != "yes")

{
    header("Location: register.php");
    exit();
}  
  
?>

Hiya,

basically line-by-line:
1) start the session
2) check if session variable "auth" is set - the "at - @" is there to surpress any warning messages in case the session variable is not set yet
3) if the session variable does not exist redirect to the register page (if you want it to redirect elsewhere you could try: header('Location: ./inc/register.php') or header('Location: ' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?page=register')...
4) exit() is there to make sure none of the code below redirection to another page gets executed, personally I believe it is a blast from the past when PHP use to do that but you can't do any harm leaving it there - I do...

Good luck,
hoopyfrood

[xited1@cox.net]

Thank you so much for answering!

Just so I'm clear on this.....
the 'auth' means that the user has registered and is now "authorized"?? to view this page, and if the user is not registered it redirects them to the registration page?

I know some people are laughing and shaking their heads at me. But, when you're a novice it is really hard to find answers to these questions, I took an online class to learn PHP, which is now over, so no help there, and I bought some books, but they are sometimes too technical and I can't ask the book questions on how to apply what they are demonstrating for my own uses. So I search these sites to find my answers and useful code snippets to use.

Thanks again!

[vbplusme]

Not quite. The conditional is checking if the value of $_session['auth'] is set to "yes". Generally, and in this case when the user logs into their account the $_SESSION['auth'] flag gets set to "yes" as part of the login procedure. If the flag is not set to "yes" the script send the user to the registration page.

HTH,

vbplusme