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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T02:13:10+00:00

Per request, there are a few different ways that you can tell whether or

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Per request, there are a few different ways that you can tell whether or not a session has been started, such as:

$isSessionActive = (session_id() != "");

Or:

$isSessionActive = defined('SID');

However, these both fail if you start a session, then close it; session_id() will return the prior session’s ID, while SID will be defined. Likewise, calling session_start() at this point will generate an E_NOTICE if you already have a session active. Is there a sane way to check if a session is currently active, without having to resort to output buffering, the shut-up operator (@session_start()), or something else equally as hacky?

EDIT: I wrote a patch to try to get this functionality included in PHP: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=52982

EDIT 8/29/2011: New function added to PHP 5.4 to fix this: “Expose session status via new function, session_status” 

// as of 8/29/2011
$isSessionActive = (session_status() == PHP_SESSION_ACTIVE);

EDIT 12/5/11: session_status() on the PHP manual.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    See edits to the original question; basically, PHP 5.4 and above now has a function called session_status() to solve this problem!

    “Expose session status via new function, session_status” (SVN Revision 315745)

    If you need this functionality in a pre-PHP 5.4 version, see hakre’s answer.

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