PHP 4.1.2 and arrays

Hello,

I'm having a problem getting an array to accept values. I'm using php 4.1.2 on and windows nt4 platform (not my choice). In previous versions of php I had no problems creating an array and adding items to the array everytime a user clicked on the "buy" button and the page reloaded adding the product_id to the array. Now it won't work at all!!!

Here is the code I'm using. I also have set the array as a cookie as session variables did not seem to be working either.
<?PHP
session_start();
//checking to see if the cookie exists, if not creating the array
if(!$cart) {

$cart = array();

setCookie("cart", $cart, time()+ 7200);
}

//retrieving the product id passed into the page by clicking on the
//buy button
$product_id = $_GET['product_id']; - product id value is 9005

$total_products = count($cart);

//making the total_products var a session var
$_SESSION['total_products'] = $total_products;

if(isset($product_id)) {

$i = 1 + total_products;

$cart[$i] = $product_id;

$total_products = count($cart);

}



while(list($key, $val) = each ($cart)) {

echo "key: $key - val: $val<br>";

}

?>

When I check to see what the $cart var is:
it says it's an array, but it won't list out the key or values of the array.
When I use: echo $cart[$i] - the result is 9 not 9005 which is the product_id value.

Could somebody please help me with this before I go crazy?

Thanks,
Trish

I dont know a lot about cookies I always work with sessions. But I cant see in your code somewhere you really put the value in your cookie. I can only see that you create a cookie (empty) but not when someone has selected an item. So i think you have to make something like
if($submit) { set your cookie here with the new value }

Cya
Bjorn

Maby I am wrong but this is all I can see.

What kind of error message/warning do you get?

u cant store arrays in cookies. use only sessions instead.

And since you are using PHP 4.1.2 you are better off using the new super globals $_SESSION, $_COOKIE, $_GET, $_POST and $_FILES.