sessions across windows

[Swanwick]

I have plugged in 3 3rd party open source apps into my site: a menu driver, a calendar, and the XMB forum. When I say plugged in I mean that they are hosted from my site, available from my main menu, and there is single sign-on.

In order to accomplish single sign-on, I have to "trick" the 3rd party apps into thinking that the user has signed on through their app. This means setting certain session variables and then adding session_start() into their header that is included on all pages.

I start to run into problems with the fact that my header include displays my site's menu. If I then include the 3rd party app below, it does not like it because it is doing things with the header that is not allowed after output has begun. So, instead I am just loading their page without my menu at the top. This is fine as long as I can load into a new window so that navigation is not away from my menu.

However, when the target is another page, I seem to lose my session variables. Does anyone know how to solve this problem? As it is now, everything works, but when the user is finished with the calendar, there is no way to navigate back other than re-typing the URL.

Cheers,
Swan

P.S. The 3 apps are the Alaris menu system (upgraded to allow for up to 26 menus based on user type. I am currently using 'Member' and 'Guest' ie it shows a different menu when someone is logged in vs. when they are not. 2nd app is Webcalendar

http://webcalendar.sourceforge.net/

Third app is what is running this forum application: XMBforum.
If anyone wants integration info on any of these apps, I am happy to help. If you have any other suggs for integration of other apps, share the love.

 

[DRJ478]

Swanwick,

A possible solution for your predicament is to make your header include in a way that it creates an HTML frameset.
The upper frame has your site menu while the lower frame shows the PHP application(s).

Besides a frameset like that you can look into the <IFRAME> conecpt where you run the application within that IFRAME.

These answers are HTML specific and don't have really much to do with PHP.

You cannot make certain that the new windows have the same PHP SessionID. Mozilla, Netscape etc. using tabs allow for that, IE seems to create a new instance of itself that spawns a new session ID with each window.