May
20
2013
Classes and functions // PHP

Simple session based “flash” messages

Author An article by admin    Comments 10 Comments

Quite a while ago, I grew tired of trying to come up with new and creative ways to display simple, one-time messages to users without crazy amounts of code for something that was frequently as trivial as “Saved!”.

Sessions are the obvious solution, however, without a single function that could both generate, AND display the messages, it still wasn’t any better.  And as usual, where there’s a will, and some code- there’s a way!

Before we get started, make sure that a session is started, otherwise a) no message will be displayed, and b) super fun headers already sent messages.

//Ensure that a session exists (just in case)
if( !session_id() )
{
    session_start();
}

The rest is as easy as it gets!

The function

/**
 * Function to create and display error and success messages
 * @access public
 * @param string session name
 * @param string message
 * @param string display class
 * @return string message
 */
function flash( $name = '', $message = '', $class = 'success fadeout-message' )
{
    //We can only do something if the name isn't empty
    if( !empty( $name ) )
    {
        //No message, create it
        if( !empty( $message ) && empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) )
        {
            if( !empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) )
            {
                unset( $_SESSION[$name] );
            }
            if( !empty( $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] ) )
            {
                unset( $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] );
            }

            $_SESSION[$name] = $message;
            $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] = $class;
        }
        //Message exists, display it
        elseif( !empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) && empty( $message ) )
        {
            $class = !empty( $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] ) ? $_SESSION[$name.'_class'] : 'success';
            echo '<div class="'.$class.'" id="msg-flash">'.$_SESSION[$name].'</div>';
            unset($_SESSION[$name]);
            unset($_SESSION[$name.'_class']);
        }
    }
}

Setting messages

//Set the first flash message with default class
flash( 'example_message', 'This content will show up on example2.php' );

//Set the second flash with an error class
flash( 'example_class', 'This content will show up on example2.php with the error class', 'error' );

Displaying the messages

<?php flash( 'example_message' ); ?>
<?php flash( 'example_class' ); ?>

Conclusion

There’s no reason to sweat the small stuff, and hopefully this makes that possible for someone else!  I’ve wrapped the messages in a div by default, however, you can obviously get creative and implement this in any way necessary.

[dm]9[/dm]

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10 Comments + Add Comment

  • Sessions?! August 24, 2013 at 1:53 pm

    Don’t you think using sessions to do this a bit a waste of resources?

    Why not implement something similar with cookies and JS and cut the persistent server-side storage out of the equation altogether?

    Reply
    • Bennett Stone September 13, 2013 at 3:20 am

      I personally always prefer to avoid cookies, although you could certainly replace session usage with cookies and the end result would work just as well

      Reply
  • jay November 21, 2013 at 8:18 pm

    I really love this its esactly what i wanted, how can i make it fade out and / or have an exit button to hide this flash message?

    Reply
    • Bennett Stone November 27, 2013 at 8:49 pm

      Try adding class=”fadeout-message”, then in your jquery scripts file (usually script.js in my case) add something such as:

      if('.fadeout-message'){
      setTimeout(function() {
      $('.fadeout-message').slideUp(1200);
      }, 5000);
      }

      Reply
      • Random PHP dev June 9, 2014 at 5:06 pm

        >how can i make it fade out
        .fadeOut()

        Reply
        • Bennett Stone June 20, 2014 at 9:01 pm

          Pretty easily! The following code needs to be inside a $(document).ready(function(){} statement:

          //NOTE: Make sure you include jquery or this will not work
          jQuery(document).ready(function($){
          if('.fadeout-message'){
          setTimeout(function() {
          $('.fadeout-message').slideUp(1200);
          }, 5000);
          }
          });

          Reply
  • Joffrey April 11, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    Thanks so much. This was very helpful.

    Reply
  • Farid August 15, 2015 at 5:49 pm

    Just the simple thing i’m looking for

    Reply
  • Finn June 28, 2016 at 1:41 pm

    This is absolutely genius! I love it.

    There is a tiny issue in the way this page parses your code block. It turned

    if( !empty( $message ) && empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) )

    into

    if( !empty( $message ) && empty( $_SESSION[$name] ) )

    The same issue is also in the final elseif condition.

    Thank you so much for this!!

    Reply
  • Shreyas B September 2, 2016 at 11:07 am

    Thank you sooo much , Just what i wanted!! tysm

    Reply

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