CakePHP - how to push array in Session?

Question

If I have the following,

$this->Session->write('ScoreCardCriteria', 'test');

And want to add another item to ScoreCardCriteria as an array of items, how would I do so?

With regular PHP, It would be something like

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

I came up with this:

    $new_array = array_merge((array)$this->Session->read('ScoreCardCriteria'), array('test'));
    $this->Session->write('ScoreCardCriteria', $new_array);

But I'd love it if there was a more "cake" way to do it.

Answer 1

You could do this:

$this->Session->write('ScoreCardCriteria', array( 'test' ) );

And then:

$data = $this->Session->read('ScoreCardCriteria');
$data[] = 'test';
$this->Session->write('ScoreCardCriteria', $data);

However, to be quite honest, CakePHP uses the $_SESSION object internally and just overrides the default session handlers. The only thing ->write does is parse a dot notated set path (which would look like foo.bar.x ) which you are not doing. And echo debug information if you are watching particular values. It shouldn't hurt if you modify $_SESSION directly.

Answer 2

You need to read the session data and then merge it with your data to be appended. You should also check if the session data exists before doing so:

if ($this->Session->check('ScoreCardCriteria')) {
    $this->Session->write('ScoreCardCriteria', am(
       $this->Session->read('ScoreCardCriteria'),
       array('test')
    ));
} else {
    $this->Session->write('ScoreCardCriteria', array('test'));
}

Hope that helps.