Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Encoding and Decoding Session Variables

You have already seen the way in which PHP encodes and saves (serializes) session variables when you peeked into a session file. You can, in fact, gain access to the encoded string at any time with session_encode(). This can be useful in debugging your session-enabled environments. You can use session_encode() to reveal the state of all session variables:

session_start();
print session_encode()."<br/>";
// sample output: products|a:2:{i:0;s:8:"Hal 2000";i:1;s:6:"Tardis";}

From the sample output in the previous fragment, you can see the session variables that are stored. You can use this information to check that variables are being registered and updated as you expect. session_encode() is also useful ...