File Adapter

File Adapter

InitPHP\Sessions\Adapters\FileAdapter stores each session as a file in a directory you choose — without touching the global session.save_path ini setting.

Requirements: none.

Options

Option	Type	Default	Notes
path	string	—	Required. An existing, writable directory.
prefix	string	sess_	Prefix for each session file name.

If path is missing, or is not a writable directory, the constructor throws a SessionInvalidArgumentException.

Usage

use InitPHP\Sessions\Session;
use InitPHP\Sessions\Adapters\FileAdapter;

$adapter = new FileAdapter([
    'path'   => '/var/www/storage/sessions',
    'prefix' => 'sess_',
]);

Session::createImmutable($adapter)->start();

A session with id abc123 is stored at /var/www/storage/sessions/sess_abc123.

Garbage collection

gc() runs on PHP's normal session GC schedule (governed by session.gc_probability / session.gc_divisor / session.gc_maxlifetime). It deletes every file in path whose modification time is older than gc_maxlifetime, and returns the number of files removed.

You can also trigger it manually:

$deleted = $adapter->gc(3600); // delete sessions idle for > 1 hour

Behaviour notes

• read() returns the file's contents, or '' if the file does not exist (a brand-new session).
• write() overwrites the file atomically via file_put_contents().
• destroy() deletes the file if present and always reports success (destroying a non-existent session is not an error).

When to use it

• You want a non-default save path or file prefix without editing php.ini.
• Single-server deployments, or shared storage (NFS/EFS) across a small fleet.

For multi-server setups where shared storage is awkward, prefer Redis or PDO.

See also

• Adapters overview
• Custom Adapters