Manually Set PHP Session Timeout — PHP Session

To find out what the default (file-based-sessions) session timeout value on the server is you can view it through a ini_get command:

// Get the current Session Timeout Value
$currentTimeoutInSecs = ini_get(’session.gc_maxlifetime’);

Change the Session Timeout Value

// Change the session timeout value to 30 minutes  // 8*60*60 = 8 hours
ini_set(’session.gc_maxlifetime’, 30*60);
//————————————————————————————–

// php.ini setting required for session timeout.

ini_set(‘session.gc_maxlifetime’,30);
ini_set(‘session.gc_probability’,1);
ini_set(‘session.gc_divisor’,1);
//————————————————————————————–
//if you want to change the  session.cookie_lifetime.
//This required in some common file because to get the session values in whole application we need to write session_start();  to each file then only will get $_SESSION global variable values.

$sessionCookieExpireTime=8*60*60;
session_set_cookie_params($sessionCookieExpireTime);
session_start();

// Reset the expiration time upon page load //session_name() is default name of session PHPSESSID

if (isset($_COOKIE[session_name()]))
setcookie(session_name(), $_COOKIE[session_name()], time() + $sessionCookieExpireTime, “/”);
//————————————————————————————–
//To get the session cookie set param values.

$CookieInfo = session_get_cookie_params();

echo “<pre>”;
echo “Session information session_get_cookie_params function :: <br />”;
print_r($CookieInfo);
echo “</pre>”;
//————————————————————————————–
Some Description of session related setting for php.ini file.

session.gc_maxlifetime integer

session.gc_maxlifetime specifies the number of seconds after which data will be seen as ‘garbage’ and cleaned up. Garbage collection occurs during session start.

session.cookie_lifetime integer

session.cookie_lifetime specifies the lifetime of the cookie in seconds which is sent to the browser. The value 0 means “until the browser is closed.” Defaults to 0. See also session_get_cookie_params() and session_set_cookie_params(). Since the cookie is returned by the browser, it is not prolonged to suffice the lifetime. It must be sent manually by setcookie().

Thanks,
Nilesh Prajapati.