Session ID of user not logged in

Question

I need to record some data in the database for a user in the session (a custom add-on) and I'd been using the value returned from PHP's session_id() method, which works well enough.

When the user logs in, I then need to update the data with the logged in member's ID.

However I'm finding that when the user logs in, that session_id() is empty so I lose the link to what was in session for that user prior to login.

I had originally tried using $EE->session->userdata('session_id') but that was zero, which is why I ended up using the native session_id() method.

Does anybody have any suggestions for the best way of achieving this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

What about setting a cookie with a random string as the identifier? Will be much more reliable I think.

Just create the string once, then set the cookie and insert your visitor into your database at the same time.

if( ! $cookie = ee()->input->cookie('guest_id') )
{
    ee()->load->helper('string');
    $id = random_string('unique');
    ee()->functions->set_cookie('guest_id', $id);
    // Do your database stuff here.
}

Answer 2

I ended up doing this in my module's constructor method:

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

$this->EE->input->set_cookie(array(
    'name'   => 'exp_tp_session_id',
    'value'  => session_id(),
    'expire' => 60*60*24 // 24 hrs
));

And then when a user logs in, I retrieve that cookie value and then use EE's session.

Seems odd that I'd have to do this but it works. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something...