AJAX and session variables aren't working

[mctrivia]

I am using SAJAX version 0.12 on my web site http://matthewandzabrina.com

 

it works great for requesting data back from the server but it seems that anything I write to a session variable is ignored.

 

The trouble code is below:

function ajaxRequest($com) {
  //x_ajaxRequest(".picHTML",args1,arg2,...,returnFunction);

  //get list of arguments
  $vars=array_slice(func_get_args(),1);

  //get database
  global $conn;

  //Handle Picture List
  if ($com=='.picHTML') {
    //get vars
    if (isset($vars[0])) {
      $_SESSION['width']=$vars[0];
      $temp=array(
'showtag' => $vars[1],
        'showinmap' => $vars[2],
        'mapN' => $vars[3],
        'mapE' => $vars[4],
        'mapS' => $vars[5],
        'mapW' => $vars[6]
      );
      $_SESSION['index' . CAT_NUM]=serialize($temp);
    }
    $indexvars=unserialize($_SESSION['index' . CAT_NUM]);

 

$indexvars gets the values needed to sucessfully generate the result i want from the ajax command but if you reload the page it always reverts back to the original values and not the updated values.

[mctrivia]

i found that i can read session variables in ajax requests but writing does not work so as a work around I used 1 session variable to hold an id number and a mySQL database entry to store the actual data.

 

 

//open database
$conn = mysql_connect(DB_HOST,DB_USER,DB_PASS) or die ('I cannot connect to the database because: ' . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db(DB_DATA, $conn);

//setup default user vars:
$GLOBALS['userVars']=array(
'showtag' => 'Show All',
        'showinmap' => 0,
        'mapN' => 999,
        'mapE' => 999,
        'mapS' => -999,
        'mapW' => -999,
'width' => 800
);




if (!isset($_SESSION['id' . CAT_NUM])) {  


  //if first entering site generate a session id and save default values
  $ip=ip2long($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
  $sql = "INSERT INTO `aigaznet_mazpic`.`session` (`id`, `ip`, `time`, `cat`, `vars`) VALUES (NULL, '" . $ip . "', NOW()," . CAT_NUM . ", '" . serialize($GLOBALS['userVars']) . "');"; 
  mysql_query($sql,$conn);
  $_SESSION['id' . CAT_NUM]=mysql_insert_id($conn);

} else {


  //if already enterd load saved user values
  $sql='SELECT `vars` FROM `session` WHERE `id`=' . $_SESSION['id' . CAT_NUM];
  $res = mysql_query($sql,$conn);
  if ($user = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)) {
    $GLOBALS['userVars']=unserialize($user['vars']);
  }


}

function updateUserVars() {
  $sql="UPDATE `session` SET `time`=NOW(), `vars` = '" . serialize($GLOBALS['userVars']) . "' WHERE `id`=" . $_SESSION['id' . CAT_NUM];
  global $conn;
  mysql_query($sql,$conn);
}