Check if PHP session has already started

Question

I have a PHP file that is sometimes called from a page that has started a session and sometimes from a page that doesn\'t have session started. Therefore when I have s

Answer 1

session_start();
if(!empty($_SESSION['user']))
{     
  //code;
}
else
{
    header("location:index.php");
}

Answer 2

you can do this, and it's really easy.

if (!isset($_SESSION)) session_start();

Hope it helps :)

Answer 3

Prior to PHP 5.4 there is no reliable way of knowing other than setting a global flag.

Consider:

var_dump($_SESSION); // null
session_start();
var_dump($_SESSION); // array
session_destroy();
var_dump($_SESSION); // array, but session isn't active.

Or:

session_id(); // returns empty string
session_start();
session_id(); // returns session hash
session_destroy();
session_id(); // returns empty string, ok, but then
session_id('foo'); // tell php the session id to use
session_id(); // returns 'foo', but no session is active.

So, prior to PHP 5.4 you should set a global boolean.

Answer 4

Check this :

<?php
/**
* @return bool
*/
function is_session_started()
{
    if ( php_sapi_name() !== 'cli' ) {
        if ( version_compare(phpversion(), '5.4.0', '>=') ) {
            return session_status() === PHP_SESSION_ACTIVE ? TRUE : FALSE;
        } else {
            return session_id() === '' ? FALSE : TRUE;
        }
    }
    return FALSE;
}

// Example
if ( is_session_started() === FALSE ) session_start();
?>

Source http://php.net

Answer 5

PHP 5.4 introduced session_status(), which is more reliable than relying on session_id().

Consider the following snippet:

session_id('test');
var_export(session_id() != ''); // true, but session is still not started!
var_export(session_status() == PHP_SESSION_ACTIVE); // false

So, to check whether a session is started, the recommended way in PHP 5.4 is now:

session_status() == PHP_SESSION_ACTIVE

Answer 6

For all php version

if ((function_exists('session_status') 
  && session_status() !== PHP_SESSION_ACTIVE) || !session_id()) {
  session_start();
}