Can't programmatically log member in

Question

Can someone explain to me why I am not capable of forcing a new ExpressionEngine session to be generated for a specific user? I've been following this link: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13073134/what-is-the-best-way-to-log-a-user-in-programatically-in-expressionengine

What I am trying to do is to temporarily create an EE session, and then to create a channel entry for that logged in user. I can then destroy the session. However, my PHP script seems to fall down when it sees $this->EE. Is there something in particular I need to do to initiate the EE variable to begin with?

See my code below. Do I need to place this code in a template or something else?

// Get the member's id (the member must have permissions to post entries)
$log_in_id = 23; // [email protected] - member id //

// Create session
echo 'before new session | ';
$this->EE->session->create_new_session($log_in_id);
//$this->EE->session->create_new_session(23, TRUE);
echo 'after new session | ';
print_r($this->EE->session);
$this->EE->load->library('api');
$this->EE->api->instantiate('channel_entries');

$data = array(
    'channel_name'  => 'members', //[Required]
    'title'         => $tmp_firstname.' '.$tmp_lastname, //[Required]
    'author_id'     => $memberID,
    //'entry_id'        => 0,
    'field_id_37'   => $memberID,
    'field_id_38'   => $tmp_firstname,
    'field_id_39'   => $tmp_lastname,
    'field_id_70'   => $tmp_company,
    'field_id_71'   => $tmp_ref,
    'field_id_73'   => $tmp_qty,
    'field_id_74'   => $tmp_remainder,
    'field_id_72'   => $tmp_owner
);
print_r($data);

$this->EE->api_channel_fields->setup_entry_settings(1, $data);

if ($this->EE->api_channel_entries->submit_new_entry(1, $data) === FALSE){ echo '[ERROR]'; }
else{ echo 'SUCCESS';  $this->EE->session->destroy(); }

Any info would be appreciated!

Answer 1

$this->EE is referring to the EE singleton object that basically powers everything in EE. You need to reference the global object from memory.

$this->EE =& get_instance();

If this doesn't work, then be sure you are executing your code within the EE bootstrap (within a module, plugin, extension, library, or some other approved place).

Answer 2

This has now been solved thanks to @Justin Kimbrell. I have just placed the original code I was developing inside an ExpressionEngine template and updated its php preferences. Doing so places the code within the bootstrap as suggested above, and still allows for the template to be call via a URL. In the template I am simply just using the same code as above with a single addition: $this->EE->api->instantiate('channel_fields');