need help with arrays in session

hi,

im on a shopping cart system at the moment, and i want the shoping basket saved in tn the session, until the user enters his adress and hits "confirm order". (so i dont have to create an extra table with temporary orders and clean it up from time to time).

i tried something like
$cart=array("article_id"=>123, "pieces"=>4)
but im stuck here because i have no idea how to save this array in the $_SESSION[] (already an array), and how to add/change articles later.

maybe its just to early in the morning - my eyes are open but my brain is still sleeping...

 

function add_to_cart($qty, $productID}{
	$BASKET	=array();
	$BASKET		=$_SESSION['Basket'];
	$_SESSION['NumItems']=$_SESSION['NumItems']+$qty;
		if(array_key_exists($productID,$BASKET)){
				$BASKET["$productID"]=$BASKET["$productID"]+$qty;
//Load the $basket array into the session array under Basket
				$_SESSION['Basket']=$BASKET;
			}else{
				$BASKET["$productID"] =$productID;
				$BASKET["$productID"] =$qty;
//Load the $basket array into the session array under Basket
				$_SESSION['Basket']=$BASKET;
			};
}

Code (markup):

Bit of an old one that so bit messy but you should get the grasp of it if not can provide a better coded/comment or sure someone else will

 

If it's a simple key => value array, I like to implode the array into a string:

$arraystring = implode("|", $array); // array becomes "item1|item2|item3|item4| etc..."

Code (markup):

and then use explode("|", $arraystring) to make the string an array again.

For multidimensional arrays (i.e. key => value1, value2, etc.) I like to use serialize($array) as it preserves the array. Then just unserialize() when I need the array again

Once either function is performed, the array (now a string) can be saved as a single value (i.e. $_SESSION['myarraystring'] ).