php Sessions not working

[satbir]

Login Page

if ($name == $newName)
{
if ($password == $newpass)
{
    session_destroy();
    $_SESSION['myAdmin']=true;
    header("Location:adminArea.php");

adminArea.php

if ($_SESSION['myAdmin']=true)
{
    echo "Session Y";
?>

Log Out Page

<?php
session_start(); ob_start();

switch ($_POST['submit'])
{
    // ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    case "signOut":
    session_destroy();
    header("Location:../");
    break;

After Sign out, session remains active

[Jacques1]

Your admin area makes everybody an admin:

if ($_SESSION['myAdmin'] = true)
                         ^

This is an assignment, which means the condition is always true.

 

You probably wanted to check for == true, but this doesn't make much sense either. The variable $_SESSION['myAdmin'] is already a boolean. It doesn't get any “truer” or “falser” by doing comparisons. Just use it directly:

if ($_SESSION['myAdmin'])

This is also much safer against typos.

 

 

 

What's the session_destroy() in the log-in script supposed to do?

Edited December 30, 2016 by Jacques1

[Strider64]

I agree with the above for that a good way in not getting trip up with boolean comparisons. A simple trick that I do when writing if statements is I use === instead of == that way if I forget an equal sign it'll still work (someone told me this a long time ago when I was asking for help). This will work 95% of the time, but there are some instances that you can't use a direct comparison (exactly the same value) and in the situation you need either to use the == or === depending in whatcha doing, but I really haven't found that to be a hiccup. I don't do much regex and I am guessing that would be where that comes into play?. 

[Jacques1]

I wouldn't use the === operator to have a “spare =”.

 

The purpose of === is type safety. You use it when the type is needed as additional information to distinguish between multiple values (e. g. the integer 0 and the boolean false in a boolean context; strpos() is a classical use case).  Type-safe comparisons are also used in critical features to prevent bugs.

 

But that's it. When you routinely do === comparisons, you're going against the type system which is weak by design. The fact that we can write

if ($an_array)
{
    // not empty
}
else
{
    // empty
}

or

if ($a_string)

or

"1234" == 1234

is how it's meant to work.