Guzzle php how to set (mock) session variable

Question

In guzzle we can use cookiejar to persist session. But how do I create a session variable? This is my phpunit guzzle code

use Guzzle\Http\Client; use Guzzle\Plugin\Cookie\CookiePlugin; 
use Guzzle\Plugin\Cookie\CookieJar\ArrayCookieJar;

$cookiePlugin = new CookiePlugin(new ArrayCookieJar());

$client = new Client('http://somewhere.com/'); 
$client->addSubscriber($cookiePlugin);

//I want to set some session variable here
//  $_SESSION['foo'] = 'bar';

$client->get('http://somewhere.com/test.php')->send();

$request = $client->get('http://somewhere.com/'); 
$request->send();

And this is the test.php file on the server

session_start();
error_log(print_r($_SESSION, true));

Answer 1

It is the very essence of session variables that they are not accessible from the outside world and cannot be influenced by the client (in this case: Guzzle). The only way to influence a session is to send a session cookie or not.

So if you require your tests to set a session variable, and your production code on the server does not allow the client to set a value directly, you'd have to provide a test method to do this. Note the security implications of doing so, in case this code ever escapes into production.

You can take shortcuts. If the test code is running on the same machine as the server code, you'd be able to pre-define a session id by the client, save some data into it, then session_write_close() it and use the session id as a cookie value with the request. It's supposed to write the session data into a file and read it back from there. If you have access to a different session storage directly, you could also use this. These methods won't affect security.

If all else fails, create a file that allows two parameters: Session key and value. If posted, the script will enter them into $_SESSION.