session functions slow scripts down noticably

[Catfish]

Hi,

 

I'm building some scripts that I designed with multi-user environment in mind from the start. In the last week I finally added my code to manage the user login system. I'm using session() functions to do this.

 

I pretty much just call session_register() and register the username into $_SESSION after the username and password authenticates correctly.

 

From then on, any page that loads uses an include call to load my "sessionCheck.php" file which just calls session_start(); and checks if 'userLogin' is registered in the session. If it's not, it returns to the user login page and if it is registered then it will continue loading the desired page.

 

 

Since adding these session functions to my code, page load time is down to maybe 1-1.5 seconds compared to almost instant loading before hand.

 

Are there any reasons why it slows down so much or is that just the nature of sessions? Are there any other alternative methods I can use for a user-login/logout management system? If so, where can I find some documentation on this?

 

Any help or comments are appreciated.

[trq]

These functions shouldn't slow down performance. You might want to read up on session_register though, it has long been depricated and is no longer needed.

[Catfish]

So i should just use $_SESSION['userLogin'] = "..."; instead of session_register();?

[trq]

Yup.

[Catfish]

Ok, will change that later.

 

Are there any other methods used to manage a user login environment and private pages under PHP?

[trq]

Are there any other methods used to manage a user login environment and private pages under PHP?

 

Not really, thats one main objective of sessions.