I want to pass a couple of variables from one PHP page to another. I am not using a form. The variables are some messages that the target page will display if something goes wrong. How can I pass these variables to the other PHP page while keeping them invisible?
e.g. let's say that I have these two variables:
//Original page
$message1 = "A message";
$message2 = "Another message";
and I want to pass them from page1.php to page2.php. I don't want to pass them through the URL.
//I don't want
'page2.php?message='.$message1.'&message2='.$message2
Is there a way (maybe through $_POST?) to send the variables? If anyone is wondering why I want them to be invisible, I just don't want a big URL address with parameters like "&message=Problem while uploading your file. This is not a valid .zip file" and I don't have much time to change the redirections of my page to avoid this problem.
Sessions would be good choice for you. Take a look at these two examples from PHP Manual:
Code of page1.php
<?php
// page1.php
session_start();
echo 'Welcome to page #1';
$_SESSION['favcolor'] = 'green';
$_SESSION['animal'] = 'cat';
$_SESSION['time'] = time();
// Works if session cookie was accepted
echo '<br /><a href="page2.php">page 2</a>';
// Or pass along the session id, if needed
echo '<br /><a href="page2.php?' . SID . '">page 2</a>';
?>
Code of page2.php
<?php
// page2.php
session_start();
echo 'Welcome to page #2<br />';
echo $_SESSION['favcolor']; // green
echo $_SESSION['animal']; // cat
echo date('Y m d H:i:s', $_SESSION['time']);
// You may want to use SID here, like we did in page1.php
echo '<br /><a href="page1.php">page 1</a>';
?>
To clear up things - SID is PHP's predefined constant which contains session name and its id. Example SID value:
PHPSESSID=d78d0851898450eb6aa1e6b1d2a484f1