PHP session variable changes between pages

Question

I have a session variable that I set like this:

Answer 1

Looks weird. That first chunk of code that resets the token must have been run again somehow.

Answer 2

The only solution I can think of is that you are making a second request to the first page without knowing it. You should probably check your apache access log for this second access...

Making a simple request counter would be another solution to check this:

$_SESSION['counter'] = isset($_SESSION['counter'])? $_SESSION['counter'] +1 : 0;

Answer 3

Completely stupid mistake on my part. I had some empty <img> tags in there that were causing the extra requests. facepalm Sorry everyone, problem solved. Thanks for your help!!

Answer 4

You will notice that every time you revisit the first page, your session variable will change. Since it works for a constant string, 'example', I will assume that you revisit page 1 to view what is stored there.

A fix could be checking to ensure that that session variable is not set before you set it again. i.e.

<?php
session_start();
if(!empty($_SESSION['token'])){
    $token = md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
    $_SESSION['token'] = $token;
}
print $_SESSION['token'];
?>

This chunk of code should work as expected.