How to set lifetime of session

Question

How to set session lifetime in PHP? I Want to set it to forever as long as the request is exist. The request is AJAX. My PHP code that handle AJAX request is:

// AJAX.php
<?php    
session_start();

$_SESSION['counter'] = $_SESSION['counter'] + 1;

header('Content-type: application/json');    
echo json_encode(array('tick' => $_SESSION['counter']));
?>

and the JavaScript:

$(document).ready(function() {            
function check() {
    getJSON('ajax.php');        
}

function getJSON(url) {                                
    return $.getJSON(
                url,
                function(data) {
                    $("#ticker").html(data.tick);
                }
           );
}

setInterval(function() {
    check();
}, 10000); // Tick every 10 seconds

});

The session always resets after 300 seconds.

Answer 1

The sessions on PHP works with a Cookie type session, while on server-side the session information is constantly deleted.

For set the time life in php, you can use the function session_set_cookie_params, before the session_start:

session_set_cookie_params(3600,"/");
session_start();

For ex, 3600 seconds is one hour, for 2 hours 3600*2 = 7200.

But it is session cookie, the browser can expire it by itself, if you want to save large time sessions (like remember login), you need to save the data in the server and a standard cookie in the client side.

You can have a Table "Sessions":

• session_id int
• session_hash varchar(20)
• session_data text

And validating a Cookie, you save the "session id" and the "hash" (for security) on client side, and you can save the session's data on the server side, ex:

On login:

setcookie('sessid', $sessionid, 604800);      // One week or seven days
setcookie('sesshash', $sessionhash, 604800);  // One week or seven days
// And save the session data:
saveSessionData($sessionid, $sessionhash, serialize($_SESSION)); // saveSessionData is your function

If the user return:

if (isset($_COOKIE['sessid'])) {
    if (valide_session($_COOKIE['sessid'], $_COOKIE['sesshash'])) {
        $_SESSION = unserialize(get_session_data($_COOKIE['sessid']));
    } else {
        // Dont validate the hash, possible session falsification
    }
}

Obviously, save all session/cookies calls, before sending data.