By scopas on

Is global $user an array of userspecific value?

Is it also possible to add other session variables, such as $user_favorite_animal on one customized page, that can be called from another customized page?

Would it be better to POST the variables from page to page, or would it be better to insert and retrieve variable data from db tables?

Regards,
Scopas

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

nancydru’s picture

nancydru
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commented

$user is an object variable.

I would store the variable using variable_set and variable_get (and don't forget variable_del).

Nancy W.
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NancyDru

dman’s picture

dman commented

If you are looking at user-specific preferences, you are probably best to integrate with the existing profile module. User prefs defined there become available in the $user array (IIRC) or at least can easily be fetched from it.
Plus they can be maintained on the user page, indexed etc.

It does however work only for registered users. Dunno if it's appropriate for transient anon users.
For them, I guess just using $_SESSION is adequate. Drupal does funny built-in things with SESSION however, like serializing it to the database every page-load (which is currently killing a high-traffic sit for me) but the data is certainly available there.

.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards