Problems integrating two user databases and session systems

Hey everybody.

I've been working with a client adding features to his website. Over the past few months, we've added a registration system and an array of membership features. His forum, which is running phpBB, is running on a separate database.

Here's the scenario:

Main site - "subscribedUsers" table contains all user information -- uses sessions/cookies system

Forum - "phpbb_users" table contains all user information -- uses sessions/cookies system

As a quick and dirty solution, we have phpBB create a new forum user and associate the forum user_id with the site user_id in a forum_id field.

In the header of the page, we're including /phpBB2/common.php and defining IN_PHPBB. We use the session_pagestart() and init_userprefs() functions. On login, we use the same process that phpBB does to login the forum user at the same time.

We run into problems in a few places. I'll outline them here:

- When you go from site -> forum -> site, the session is lost. However, the forum user remains logged in.
- When you try to log out from the forum, it doesn't budge.
- The append_sid() function stops working in both the site and forum.

Ideally, we want to create a system in which a user logs in from the main website, and is seamlessly logged into the forum using their forum user_id. We want the session to remain constant at all times, even when going from site -> forum -> site. Finally, we want the logout in the forum to work as usual.

I'm sure this has been solved in the past. Any ideas?

I've had the exact same problem for some time with a hobby site and haven't had a chance to figure it out yet. My guess is that it has to do with the way the cookies are set; ie, I'll bet phpBB sends a path with the cookie that's not valid for the other part of your site. The answer may be as simple as finding the cookie code and removing the path parameter. Then again, that might break the whole thing and catch your computer on fire. If you find any solutions, I hope you'll swing back by and post 'em.