Question

I need to destroy a session when user leave from a particular page. I use session_destroy() on the end of the page but its not feasible for me because my page has pagination. My page is: abc.php?page=1 or abc.php?page=2 or abc.php?page=3.

So, I need to destroy a session when a user leaves from abc.php page. How can I do it without using a cookie?

Answer 1

Doing something when the user navigates away from a page is the wrong approach because you don’t know if the user will navigate to a whole different page (say contact.php for the sake of the argument) or he/she will just go to the next page of abc.php and, as Borealid pointed out, you can’t do it without JS. Instead, you could simply add a check and see if the user comes from abc.php:

First, in your abc.php file set a unique variable in the $_SESSION array which will act as a mark that the user has been on this page:

$_SESSION['previous'] = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

Then, add this on all pages, before any output to check if the user is coming from abc.php:

if (isset($_SESSION['previous'])) {
   if (basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) != $_SESSION['previous']) {
        session_destroy();
        ### or alternatively, you can use this for specific variables:
        ### unset($_SESSION['varname']);
   }
}

This way you will destroy the session (or specific variables) only if the user is coming from abc.php and the current page is a different one.

I hope I was able to clearly explain this.