How to replace session_register() for PHP 5.4+

Michael Curving

out of the blue I was getting the following error when logging in to one of my sites:

Call to undefined function session_register()

After some research I saw that session_register() is deprecated after PHP 5.4. I checked in my hosting control panel, and sure enough it says current version I’m running is PHP 5.4.19. I assume they just forced an upgrade which is why this problem seemed to occur out of the blue.

I looked through several Stack Overflow posts and reviewed links to PHP documentation. From what I gather, session_register() is deprecated and should be replaced with $_SESSION instead.

Problem is, both of those already appear in my code. Here is the code in my index.php file:

  53 <? if ($username) {
  54    session_register("ADMIN");
  55    $_SESSION['ADMIN'] = $username;
  56 ?>

So I hoped just by removing line 54 (the deprecated piece) then it should work, however that is not the case. It broke the code when I did that.

Based on other posts I read HERE and HERE they seem to be saying that the code I see in line 55 above should by itself do the trick. So I’m a bit confused why it didn’t work. If anyone can tell me what code I should use I would sincerely appreciate it. The developer of the script is not really offering support.

NOTE: Also, yes there is session_start() called at the very top of the page.