Question

Am I doing the following correctly?

I have an array, which I want to save to a session, so I can use it later in my web application:

$data = array(
        "id" => $_POST["id"],
        "r1" => $_POST["r1"],
        "r2" => $_POST["r2"],
        "r3" => $_POST["r3"]);

I save it to a session like this:

$_SESSION['settings'] = $data;

Now, I am not sure how to make use of this later in my application.

Do I do the following

$id = $_SESSION['settings']['id'];
$r1 = $_SESSION['settings']['r1'];

or do I do the following

$data = $_SESSION['settings'];

$id = $data['id'];
$r1 = $data['r1'];

or do I do something else?

Answer 1

You can do both as $_SESSION['settings'] points to an array, the two expressions will be identical:

// The expression...
$val = $_SESSION['settings']['id'];
// ... is an internal shorthand for ...
$tmp = $_SESSION['settings']; // $tmp never exist - just to aid explanation.
$val = $tmp['id'];