session_save_path

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

session_save_pathGet and/or set the current session save path

Description

session_save_path(?string $path = null): string|false

session_save_path() returns the path of the current directory used to save session data.

Parameters

path

Session data path. If specified and not null, the path to which data is saved will be changed. session_save_path() needs to be called before session_start() for that purpose.

Note:

On some operating systems, you may want to specify a path on a filesystem that handles lots of small files efficiently.

Return Values

Returns the path of the current directory used for data storage, or false on failure.

Changelog

Version Description
8.0.0 path is nullable now.

See Also

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User Contributed Notes 5 notes

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58
mdibbets at outlook dot nospam
11 years ago
I made a folder next to the public html folder and placed these lines at the very first point in index.php

Location of session folder:

/domains/account/session

location of index.php

/domains/account/public_html/index.php

What I placed in index.php at line 0:

<?php
ini_set
('session.save_path',realpath(dirname($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']) . '/../session'));
session_start();

This is the only solution that worked for me. Hope this helps someone.
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36
alvaro at demogracia dot com
14 years ago
Debian does not use the default garbage collector for sessions. Instead, it sets session.gc_probability to zero and it runs a cron job to clean up old session data in the default directory.

As a result, if your site sets a custom location with session_save_path() you also need to set a value for session.gc_probability, e.g.:

<?php
session_save_path
('/home/example.com/sessions');
ini_set('session.gc_probability', 1);
?>

Otherwise, old files in '/home/example.com/sessions' will never get removed!
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15
sampathperera at hotmail dot com - Sri Lanka
16 years ago
Session on clustered web servers !

We had problem in PHP session handling with 2 web server cluster. Problem was one servers session data was not available in other server.

So I made a simple configuration in both server php.ini file. Changed session.save_path default value to shared folder on both servers (/mnt/session/).

It works for me. :)
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7
ohcc at 163 dot com
6 years ago
If session.save_handler is set to files, on systems that have maximum path length limitations, when the session data file's path is too long, php may get you an error like "No such file or directory" and fails to start session, although the session-saving folder really exists on the disk.

You should:

1. Keep the session-saving folder's absolute path not too long
2. If you're with PHP 7.1+, don't set session.sid_length to a number too great, such as 255

I once got stuck with this problem on Windows and wasted hours to solve it.
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1
Ale
5 months ago
This function seems to simply return the value of session.save_path from the [Session] section of php.ini. This has an important implication: the returned value can as well look like "0;0660;/var/lib/php/sessions", which is of course no valid path.

A way to extract the path despite the possible semicolons can be something like:

$ssp = explode(';', session_save_path());
echo end($ssp);

As end takes the array by reference, it's not possible to make a real one-liner without relying on an intermediate variable.
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