session id -just getting started - general questions

[ibjdt]

i have a perl based cgi pricing system on my intranet that i would like to develop for an extranet.

currently, sales people login to the intranet system to get customer prices. customers get unique pricing depending on several factors so the login lets the program know which pricing to show.

aside from pricing screens, there are 3-5 other 'sections' that don't require login (tech info, product tutorials, literature, etc.). however, i have made all pages cgi so i can pass the login ID between pages.

it appears session ID is what i need to use, but i haven't started 'coding' with it because it is confusing to me.

my questions are these:
-can the main page (with login form) and the other non-pricing pages be html??
-if so, how does the session ID get passed through these pages as users navigate back and forth?
-does the session ID re-set if an html page is re-accessed?
-most importantly, how can i translate the session ID into the users ID and keep that correlation during the session?

thanks for the help.

 

[KevinADC]

You would use cookies to maintain the state of the session between pages. The cookie should only be the ID of the session. The session file should have all other data stored in it.

See if this link helps you out:

http://search.cpan.org/~markstos/CGI-Session-4.20/lib/CGI/Session/Tutorial.pm

- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!