PHP PHP Incomplete Class Object with my SESSION data

Question

I've got a site setup that, on page load, turns all user submitted strings into SafeString objects. For those unfamiliar with SafeString, it basically forces the user to echo out sanitized data preventing XSS and whatnot..

Anyways, there's a problem. My $_SESSION array is being filled with __PHP_Incomplete_Class Object. From what I've read, this is due to not initializing the class before the session and then storing class objects in the session.

Here's my code:

require_once __WEBROOT__ . '/includes/safestring.class.php'; 

$temp = array
(
   &$_SERVER, &$_GET, &$_POST, &$_COOKIE,
   &$_SESSION, &$_ENV, &$_REQUEST, &$_FILES,
   &$HTTP_SERVER_VARS, &$HTTP_GET_VARS,
   &$HTTP_POST_VARS, &$HTTP_COOKIE_VARS,
   &$HTTP_POST_FILES, &$HTTP_ENV_VARS
); 

function StringsToSafeString(&$array)
{
   foreach ($array as $key => $value)
   {
      if (is_string($array[$key]))
      {
         $array[$key] = new SafeString($value);
      } 

      if (is_array($array[$key]))
      {
         StringsToSafeString($array[$key]);
      }
   }
}

StringsToSafeString($temp);

unset($temp);

I can't think of a way to rewrite this which would solve the problem :/

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

You just have to include the safestring.class.php before you call session_start() when you want to read the SafeString objects from $_SESSION variable:

<?php

require_once __WEBROOT__ . '/includes/safestring.class.php';    
session_start();

print_r($_SESSION);

Hope it helps!!