Do metaphorical metafile tags “interrupt” PHP sessions?

Question

I use session variables to store custom display settings while their session is active.

For example, if I want to display 5 elements on a page with session variables, then there is no problem. I can manually (f5) refresh the page and still see 5 elements on the page. However, when implementing the next meta tag for automatic refresh every time the page is refreshed, it switches to the default value of 3.

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="300">

I expect that perhaps this metadata update is causing a new session to be created, and therefore there is simply no user setting.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of problem - this is the case, and is there a known way to refresh the page and save the session?

Answer 1

From my own experience, no, it is not, and it should not. Unless, of course, you update it after the session timeout.

Is javascript setTimeoutand the replacealternative you are considering?

<script type="text/javascript">
  window.setTimeout('location.replace(location.href)', 300 * 1000);
</script>

Answer 2

You can try sending it from PHP itself using header().

header("Refresh: 300");