Manually setting session ids

I am writing some server to server software that needs to maintain state.

When I say server to server I mean that the client is not a browser, it is another PHP server (as if that wasn't obvious).

The obvious way to do this is to use the session ID. The problem is, how to first of all generate a session ID and then send back a session ID to reload a session.

Perhaps my understanding of sessions is too limited, but I can't see the wood for the trees at the moment. Maybe it's obvious and I can't see it.

This is the server (pseudocode). Forget the transport mechanism, imagine that any function can be called remotely.

<?php
session_start();

function GetSessionID()
{
return session_id();
}

function SetSessionID($session_id)
{
session_id($session_id);
}

function SetVar($var, $val)
{
$_SESSION[$var] = $val;
}

function GetVar($var)
{
return $_SESSION[$var];
}

?>

now, on the client side, the idea is to do something like this

$sid = $client->GetSessionId();
$client->SetSessionId($sid);
$client->SetVar('foo', 'bar');
echo $client->GetVar('foo'); //returns 'bar'

The problem seems to be that session_start on the server side is called at the top of the script, and there is no way to change the session_id midstream.

Even if I could change the session_id, would I get back the data I had already set?

Does anyone have any thoughts. I'm going mad.

.

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