Storing a Custom Session Array

I know how I would handle this with PHP sessions, but I know EE conflicts with those out of the box.

Can you clarify this? I have used native PHP sessions in EE 1 and EE2 many times.

if (session_id() == '')
{
   session_start();
}

$_SESSION['my_array'] = array(
    'index' => 'value',
};

You’re right, I totally forgot to include session_start(). But, now I’m having trouble passing the information between all my various templates.

I’ve got index.html which has {embed="core/.header"} and {embed="core/.footer"}. In header.html I’m accessing $_SESSION and attempting to put it into a variable. Unfortunately footer.html doesn’t see any of that.

Here’s the code in header:

$string = array();

foreach($_SESSION['quote']['bottles'] as $key[0]){
    $string[] = $key[0][0];
}

$string = implode("|", $string);
$EE->session->cache['string'] = $string;

Here’s the code in footer:

<? echo $string; ?>

No matter what I do, I cannot figure out how to store an array across all pages and templates. I’ve tried using $_SESSION, $this->EE->session, standard $php variables. Is there a secret that I’m missing or is this just not possible in EE?

Are you calling this:

if (session_id() == '')
{
   session_start();
}

on each page?

I’m calling it in the header, which is called on each page via an embed. The session variables show up in the header, but not on any of the pages the header is embedded on.

This is a parse order issue. Call the session_start() at the top of each template and not in an embed. Embeds are parsed after everything in the main template.

Thank you the3mus1can! You were right about the parse order and it appears to be working correctly now.