advanced patterns with PHP 8.2 Session Management and JSON Data Storage
I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm working with an scenario with PHP 8.2 where I attempt to store an array of JSON data in a session variable, but after a page refresh, the data seems to get corrupted or lost. Here’s a simplified version of what I’ve implemented: ```php session_start(); $data = [ 'user' => 'john_doe', 'preferences' => [ 'theme' => 'dark', 'language' => 'en' ] ]; $_SESSION['user_data'] = json_encode($data); // On a subsequent page if (isset($_SESSION['user_data'])) { $user_data = json_decode($_SESSION['user_data'], true); var_dump($user_data); } ``` After the first page load, everything works fine, and I can see the correct user data. However, upon refreshing the page, I get: `Warning: json_decode(): Invalid UTF-8 sequence in string`. I don't understand how the data could become corrupted after a refresh. I've also tried using `json_last_error()` after decoding to check for issues, and it returns `JSON_ERROR_UTF8`, which indicates a question with the character encoding. I've confirmed that there are no invalid characters in the original data by outputting it before encoding. I’ve tried setting the session cookie parameters using `session_set_cookie_params()` to ensure the session is configured correctly, but the scenario continues. Are there any best practices for safely storing and retrieving JSON data in session variables in PHP 8.2? Also, could there be any server settings or PHP configurations affecting this behavior? I would appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to troubleshoot this effectively. Am I missing something obvious? Any feedback is welcome!