how can i store global variables for whole web site

[vishal]

hi

vishal here. can anyone help me that how can i store the global
variables for my web site. suppose i want to store the no. of users
visited my site then what strategy should i use ?????

can i implement some lock mechanism so that this global variable is not
accessed by more than one application at some time which may create
some confusion.

thanks for your reply in advance........ .....

[jonathan.beckett]

It sounds like you want to store persistent data (i.e. it exists
between sessions and/or server down-time).

One solution is to put your variables in a file and just read/rewrite
the file as required.

Another solution is to have a table of key/value pairs in a database
and update them as required.

Another solution is to use the $_SESSION object if you don't need
things to be persistent.

[vishal]

thxs for information but what i want is that i want to store the
information like how many users visited site. so global variable which
is accessible by all forms and is there any mechanism to lock this
variable so at a time only one application can access this variable.
once the lock is unlocked then other application can access it.

[Daniel Tryba]

vishal <vi************ @yahoo.co.in> wrote:

thxs for information but what i want is that i want to store the
information like how many users visited site. so global variable which
is accessible by all forms and is there any mechanism to lock this
variable so at a time only one application can access this variable.
once the lock is unlocked then other application can access it.

Why not simply use a database for this (it's pretty good at counting :)?

http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/ref.sem.php might be what you are looking
for.

[NSpam]

Daniel Tryba wrote:

vishal <vi************ @yahoo.co.in> wrote:

thxs for information but what i want is that i want to store the
information like how many users visited site. so global variable which
is accessible by all forms and is there any mechanism to lock this
variable so at a time only one application can access this variable.
once the lock is unlocked then other application can access it.

Why not simply use a database for this (it's pretty good at counting :)?

http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/ref.sem.php might be what you are looking
for.

<g>

[nospam]

In: <11************ **********@g14g 2000cwa.googleg roups.com>, "vishal" <vi************ @yahoo.co.in> wrote:

can i implement some lock mechanism so that this global variable is not
accessed by more than one application at some time which may create
some confusion.

One of the things I regard as usually an asset, but sometimes a weakness is that
there is no way to store global, application wide variables the way you can
in java servlets. Part of this is the way php programs are parsed and run
each time the page is loaded. Variables don't hang around after. The other part
is the way fork() works.

With mod_perl you can "sort of" share variables, but they only apply to the current
process. (For this reason, synchronization is not an issue)

On a UNIX platform, have a look at:

http://us4.php.net/manual/en/ref.sem.php
http://us4.php.net/shmop

As far as I know, (hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong) this is the
only way to share _memory_.

I've used shared memory in other applications (other languages) and
generally recommend against it if at all possible. It can lead to a
royal nuisance when it's time to free them. Maybe things have changed,
maybe I was doing something wrong, but the shared memory was "leaked"
when the program was terminated abruptly.

Consider using a database, file, or even the serialize stuff for persistant
storage, it's slower but unless you require the speed, it's safer.

For obvious reasons, shared memory doesn't work across servers, so, if your
page is ever served via multiple web servers, (load balancing, etc..) it
won't work.

Jamie
--
http://www.geniegate.com Custom web programming
gu******@lnubb. pbz (rot13) User Management Solutions

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

vishal wrote:

thxs for information but what i want is that i want to store the
information like how many users visited site. so global variable which is accessible by all forms and is there any mechanism to lock this
variable so at a time only one application can access this variable.
once the lock is unlocked then other application can access it.

DB may be the right choice. Or may try something like:
<?php
$filename = 'globals.txt';
$fp = fopen($filename , 'rb+');
flock($fp, LOCK_EX); // exclusive lock
$contents = fread($fp, filesize($filen ame)+1);
$MYGLOBALS = unserialize($co ntents);
print_r($MYGLOB ALS); //test
$MYGLOBALS['count'] += 1;
$MYGLOBALS['foo'] += 5;
print_r($MYGLOB ALS); //test
rewind($fp);
fwrite($fp, serialize($MYGL OBALS));
flock($fp, LOCK_UN); //release lock
fclose($fp);
?>

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/