Developing State-enabled Applications With PHP
By John L.2006-08-30
Developing State-enabled Applications With PHP
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Developing State-enabled Applications With PHP
When a user is browsing through a website and is surfing from one web page to another, sometimes the website needs to remember the actions (e.g. choices) performed by the user. For example, in a website that sells DVDs, the user typically browses through a list of DVDs and selects individual DVDs for check out at the end of the shopping session. The website needs to remember which DVDs the user has selected because the selected items needs to be presented again to the user when the user checks out. In other words, the website needs to remember the State - i.e. the selected items - of the user's browsing activities.
However, HTTP is a Stateless protocol and is ill-equipped to handle States. A standard HTML website basically provides information to the user and a series of links that simply directs the user to other related web pages. This Stateless nature of HTTP allows the website to be replicated across many servers for load balancing purposes. A major drawback is that while browsing from one page to another, the website does not remember the State of the browsing session. This make interactivity almost impossible.
In order to increase interactivity, the developer can use the session handling features of PHP to augment the features of HTTP in order to remember the State of the browsing session. The are basically 2 ways PHP does this:
1. Using cookies
2. Using Sessions
The next installment discusses how to manage sessions using cookies...
Tutorial Pages:
» Developing State-enabled Applications With PHP
» Cookies
» PHP Session Handling - Cookies Enabled
» PHP Session Handling - Without Cookies
