Close session without writing or destroying it

Question

Is there a way to close a PHP session without either writing or destroying it? Am I missing something or are there just two functions ( session_write_close() and session_destroy() ) which reset session_status() to PHP_SESSION_NONE ? In other words, if I have an open session, can I simply close it without affecting the external session data, so it can be reloaded again.

Answer 1

You can do this by $_SESSION = null . The session is unavailable but the data remains (does not get deleted).

Consider you have data in the session:

<?php
session_start();
session_regenerate_id(); // get a fresh id
echo session_id();

$_SESSION['test'] = '12345';

print_r($_SESSION); // echoes the data in the session

Data: test|s:5:"12345";

Then in the next request:

<?php
session_start();
echo session_id() . "<br>"; //  echoes the same id as of the last request

$_SESSION = null;

print_r($_SESSION); // echoes nothing

echo "<br>";

echo session_status(); // echoes 2 (PHP_SESSION_ACTIVE)

Data still the same: test|s:5:"12345";

( php-fpm 5.4.29, most recent nginx, memcached as session handler ).

Well the data still can be written through $_SESSION['whatever'] = ... but not read. I'm not sure whether this is a good solution but I have to admit I still don't understand why or whatfor you need this.

As an alternative, you could implement a wrapper class for the session with a property $this->active = true; // or false $this->active = true; // or false :

class MySessionWrapper {
    protected $active;
    protected $data;
    // getter setter for $this->active and $this->data ...

    public function getData($var) {
        if ($this->active !== true) {
            throw new Exception('session disabled');
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Some months later after raising an issue the two new methods are now available in PHP 5.6, but the documentation arrived only with 5.6.2.

• session_abort() – Discard session array changes and finish session, see the docs .
• session_reset() – Re-initialize session array with original values, see the docs .