Session

Handles all manipulation of the session.

An instance of a Session object can be retrieved via an HTTPRequest by calling the getSession() method.

In order to support things like testing, the session is associated with a particular Controller. In normal usage, this is loaded from and saved to the regular PHP session, but for things like static-page-generation and unit-testing, you can create multiple Controllers, each with their own session.

Saving Data

Once you've retrieved a session instance, you can write a value to a users session using the function Session::set().

 $request->getSession()->set('MyValue', 6);

Saves the value of "6" to the MyValue session data. You can also save arrays or serialized objects in session (but note there may be size restrictions as to how much you can save)

 $session = $request->getSession();

 // save a variable
 $var = 1;
 $session->set('MyVar', $var);

 // saves an array
 $session->set('MyArrayOfValues', array('1', '2', '3'));

 // saves an object (you'll have to unserialize it back)
 $object = new Object();

 $session->set('MyObject', serialize($object));

Accessing Data

Once you have saved a value to the Session you can access it by using the Session::get() function. Note that session data isn't persisted in PHP's own session store (via $_SESSION) until Session::save() is called, which happens automatically at the end of a standard request through SilverStripe\Control\Middleware\SessionMiddleware.

The values in the comments are the values stored from the previous example.

public function bar() {
 $session = $this->getRequest()->getSession();
 $value = $session->get('MyValue'); // $value = 6
 $var   = $session->get('MyVar'); // $var = 1
 $array = $session->get('MyArrayOfValues'); // $array = array(1,2,3)
 $object = $session->get('MyObject', unserialize($object)); // $object = Object()
}

You can also get all the values in the session at once. This is useful for debugging.

$session->getAll(); // returns an array of all the session values.

Clearing Data

Once you have accessed a value from the Session it doesn't automatically wipe the value from the Session, you have to specifically remove it. To clear a value you can either delete 1 session value by the name that you saved it

$session->clear('MyValue'); // MyValue is no longer 6.

Or you can clear every single value in the session at once. Note SilverStripe stores some of its own session data including form and page comment information. None of this is vital but clearAll() will clear everything.

 $session->clearAll();