For pages where there will be significant user interaction in which the
server is not updated, it may be necessary to poll the server periodically
to touch the session.
This makes use of the existing checknet script which was designed for
checking network connectivity but fits into this use-case reasonably well.
This reverses the references used for global $USER and $SESSION,
the reason is that PHP does not allow references to references.
$USER is a reference to $GLOBALS['USER'] which means we cannot
put any references to it. Solution is to store the current user and session
objects in $GLOBALS['USER'] and $GLOBALS['SESSIOn'] are reference
them in $_SESSION.
This patch makes the session code behave the same way in CLI,
phpunit and normal web requests - this allows use to finally
unit test most aspects of the session code in Moodle.
This commit adds a session handler which works using memcache (without
requiring the memcached extension), similar to the support for
memcache within MUC.
This may be less reliable than memcached but we have been using a
similar approach on our system without problems. In case, I added a
warning in config-dist.php.
List of changes:
* New OOP API using PHP namespace \core\session\.
* All handlers now update the sessions table consistently.
* Experimental DB session support in Oracle.
* Full support for session file handler (filesystem locking required).
* New option for alternative session directory.
* Official memcached session handler support.
* Workaround for memcached version with non-functional gc.
* Improved security - forced session id regeneration.
* Improved compatibility with recent PHP releases.
* Fixed borked CSS during install in debug mode.
* Switched to file based sessions in new installs.
* DB session setting disappears if DB does not support sessions.
* DB session setting disappears if session handler specified in config.php.
* Fast purging of sessions used in request only.
* No legacy distinction - file, database and memcached support the same functionality.
* Session handler name included in performance info.
* Fixed user_loggedin and user_loggedout event triggering.
* Other minor bugfixing and improvements.
* Fixed database session segfault if MUC disposed before $DB.
Limitations:
* Session access time is now updated right after session start.
* Support for $CFG->sessionlockloggedinonly was removed.
* First request does not update userid in sessions table.
* The timeouts may break badly if server hosting forces PHP.ini session settings.
* The session GC is a lot slower, we do not rely on external session timeouts.
* There cannot be any hooks triggered at the session write time.
* File and memcached handlers do not support session lock acquire timeouts.
* Some low level PHP session functions can not be used directly in Moodle code.
