How do you use sessions to maintain state in PHP applications

Sessions in PHP allow you to maintain state across multiple pages and requests. By starting a session, you can store user data and retrieve it as needed during the user's visit. This is particularly useful for user authentication, shopping carts, and user preferences.

To use sessions, you typically follow these steps:

  1. Start the session using `session_start()`.
  2. Store data in the `$_SESSION` superglobal array.
  3. Access or modify session data across different pages.

Here is a simple example:

<?php // Start the session session_start(); // Set session variables $_SESSION['username'] = 'john_doe'; $_SESSION['loggedin'] = true; // Access session variables on another page echo 'Welcome, ' . $_SESSION['username']; // Destroying the session session_destroy(); ?>

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