echo $_SESSION returns <br /> and I can't fix it

[kaotik78]

I've racked my head on this all day long. I've been using php for 3 days now and this is the first hang up I've had and it's driving me nuts, but I can't pull myself away from trying to fix the problem. I need help or a push in the right direction.

I have a contact form and a validate form. I'll keep this short and sweet, if it can work for one field, I can figure it out for the rest.

I have session_start() at the top of both form and validate pages to start with. On the form page I have

<input name="Name" type="text" id="Name" value="<?php echo $_SESSION['Name']; ?>">

If you visit the form page before the validate page has a chance to create the sessions it returns the following in each field

<br />

In the textfield box it shows

<br />
<b>Notice</b>:  Undefined index:  AdditionalComments in <b>/myservers/mydir/htdocs/contact2.php</b> on line <b>208</b><br />

Line 208 is just the same as what was used for the input name, a php echo of the session and it's key.

I'm stumped, I've tried, searching for the tag, if/then statements for null values in the session. This is one problem that is easier with good ol ASP, I don't know what im missing. I'm trying to just show a blank form when a user views it for the first time, after they submit, it's validated, if it's good fine, if not it will re-direct and then keep state with the sessions for values. Instead it just shows that <br /> tag. Help please, I've been at this since this morning.

[ak1dnar]

Welcome to TheScripts.com

Could you please post the Not working code snippets here.

[pbmods]

Heya, Kaotik.

You're getting this notice because you're trying to output an undefined index in your _SESSION array. In other words, the first time the User accesses the page, $_SESSION['AdditionalComments'] is undefined, but you are trying to echo() it.

You have a couple of options.

You can add this to the top of your form page to initialize your array:

if( empty($_SESSON) )
{
    $_SESSION =
    array
    (
        'Name' => '',
        .
        .
        .
        'AdditionalComments' => ''
    )
}
 

Or you can suppress errors for the echo statements:

<input name="Name" ... value="<?php @echo $_SESSION['Name']; ?>">
 

Or you can simply turn off notices:

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);