1

My simple shopping cart stores products id's in a session array.

I'm trying to set up an if/else statement to enable/disable my "Add to cart" button based on the product ID being in array or not.

<?php
session_start();

//Show cart array

print_r($_SESSION['cart']);
echo '<br><br>';

//Return "yes" or "no"

$panier = $_SESSION['cart'];
$produit = "5";

if (in_array($produit, $panier)) {
print "yes man!";
} 
else {
print "no man!";
}

?>

I'm making sure 5 is part of the array values by displaying them of this test page, but the second part always returns "no man!"

looks simple enough to me. What am i doing wrong ?

print_r command output is

5,5

no man!

that is because i've added 2 of the "5" product id to my cart

If I change this line

 print_r($_SESSION['cart']);

for

 print_r($_SESSION);

I get

 Array ( [cart] => 5,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2 )

 no man!
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2
  • 7
    Show the output of print_r($_SESSION['cart']); Commented Nov 17, 2014 at 2:28
  • print_r can't output 5,5, it should give output similar to Array(cart => Array([0] => 5 [1] => 5)). However, if it really does give 5,5, then it means you put it in a string and that's why in_array doesn't work. And please do not post updates to your questions as answers - rather post it as comment or update the question. Commented Nov 17, 2014 at 2:51

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

So, according to you, $_SESSION['cart'] = "5,5"; and it means it is a string. So the right code to look up your value is strpos():

$pos = strpos($produit, $_SESSION['cart']);
if($pos !== false) {
    echo "YES";
}
else {
    echo "NO";
}

BUT there's a huge risk to get the wrong answer for this. Imagine, you have two products in your cart - first with id 15 and the other with id 7. You'll be looking for id 5. What would the above code output? It will output "YES".

So, instead of using a string, I suggest you use multidimensional array (if you want to stick with sessions). In this particular case then, the variable $_SESSION["cart"] would be an array and with adding new products it would look like this:

$_SESSION["cart"] = array(); // initial value, don't call it every time or it'll flush your array
$_SESSION["cart"][] = $product_ID;

Or similar to it.

print_r will give you a similarly-looking output:

Array(
    cart => array(
        [0] => 5
        [1] => 17
        [2] => 5
    )
)

Then, in_array should work. But, plan your storing wisely ;)

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4 Comments

Thanks for your quick answer, According to what the script returns after my changes i guess i'm really having an array in there. Isn't there any other way to check for my value in it that would not require my to change the way I write $_SESSION ? This would be a pain!
@FélixDesmeules you are wrong, according to your output, you got a string in $_SESSION['cart'], not an array. An easier way? Well, there always is a way and you can store variables however you want. But in time as your code grows bigger, you will come to conclusion that it's a wrong way, trust me. So better rewrite it now than later ;)
Then my problem is everything currently works with strings, altough i'm sure you are right about the rewrite part, I will have to go this way for now. could I change the string to an array on this code ?
@FélixDesmeules if you want to keep strings, then store product ids in unique separators, for example [], so the string would look like $_SESSION['cart'] = "[5][3][3][5][5][17]"; and when you look for $produit, wrap it around in [ and ]. In this case you will not be getting wrong answers in case you searh for 5 in a string of 15,7,2.
0

As jon asked it is better put always the output of your program But for now I am suspecting your problem is in the in_array check this link A problem about in_array it might help

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3 Comments

Your post does not answer the question completely, so in future please don't post it as answer, but as a comment under the question.
Got it, following are upcoming answers. Thanks
@Nordenheim They don't have the rep to put a comment.

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