simple session messages

Session based flash messages

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Quite a while ago, I grew tired of trying to come up with new and creative ways to display simple, one-time messages to users without crazy amounts of code for something that was frequently as trivial as “Saved!”.

Sessions are the obvious solution, however, without a single function that could both generate, AND display the messages, it still wasn’t any better.  And as usual, where there’s a will, and some code- there’s a way!


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Before we get started, make sure that a session is started, otherwise a) no message will be displayed, and b) super fun headers already sent messages.

//Ensure that a session exists (just in case)
if( !session_id() )
{
    session_start();
}

//Actual function

/**
 * Function to create and display error and success messages
 * @access public
 * @param string session name
 * @param string message
 * @param string display class
 * @return string message
 */
function flash( $name = '', $message = '', $class = 'success fadeout-message' )
{
    //We can only do something if the name isn't empty
    if( !empty( $name ) )
    {
        //No message, create it
        if( !empty( $message ) && empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) )
        {
            if( !empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) )
            {
                unset( $_SESSION[$name] );
            }
            if( !empty( $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] ) )
            {
                unset( $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] );
            }

            $_SESSION[$name] = $message;
            $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] = $class;
        }
        //Message exists, display it
        elseif( !empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) && empty( $message ) )
        {
            $class = !empty( $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] ) ? $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] : 'success';
            echo '
.$class.‘” id=”msg-flash”>’.$_SESSION[$name].‘

‘

;
            unset($_SESSION[$name]);
            unset($_SESSION[$name.'_class']);
        }
    }
}

//Set the first flash message with default class
flash( 'example_message', 'This content will show up on example2.php' );

//Set the second flash with an error class
flash( 'example_class', 'This content will show up on example2.php with the error class', 'error' );

//Displaying the messages
<?php flash( 'example_message' ); ?>
<?php flash( 'example_class' ); ?>

You can download the source from here

From: http://www.phpdevtips.com/

Extras: Addicted Upcoming