Question

I’m trying to create a session variable when a user opens the email i send them. Everything is done with two .php files. (mailer.php and register.php)

mailer.php gets all the information for a user and sends them a email with a url to the register.php page.

I want to get a session variable (User_id) from mailer.php into register.php. I’ve put the following in the email that i send from mailer.php. I doubt it works, but it illustrates what I need.

`$message = $Url . "php session_start(); '$_SESSION[id]' = " . $row['user_id'] . " ?>";
...
$mail->MsgHTML($message);
$mail->Send();`

And then on the register page

`$userID = $_SESSION['id'];`

Answer 1

You cannot attach function inside of the variable…Instead just create new table to store verification code,

function genRandomString() {
    $length = 10;
    $characters = ’0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz’;
    $string = ”;    
    for ($p = 0; $p < $length; $p++) {
        $string .= $characters[mt_rand(0, strlen($characters))];
    }
    return $string;
}
$code = genRandomString();
$message = "http://localhost/start_session.php?verify=$code";
$mail->MsgHTML($message);
if($mail->Send()){
    echo 'Message Sent';
    // Then execute a query to insert the generated code to your database
}

When user opens his email and click the link, hell go to the verification page.

Match the verification code in the database using get variable and if found, start the session otherwise no session 
$code = mysql_real_escape_string($_GET['verify'];
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM verifications WHERE verification_code=$code");
$rows = mysql_num_rows($query);
if($rows > 0){
    session_start();
    session_regenerate_id();
}