How to keep variable constant even after page refresh in PHP

Question

I'm making a simple hangman application and I have my php file and a separate .txt file holding the words, one on each line.

What I want is for the $word variable to remain constant even after the page refreshes since I was planning on using a GET or POST to get the user's input.

In the example code below I want $word to stay the same after the form is submitted. I believe it's a simple matter of moving code to another place but I can't figure out where any help for this PHP noob would be appreciated!

wordsEn1.txt:

cat
dog

functions.php:

<?php

function choose_word($words) {
    return trim($words[array_rand($words)]);
}
?>

hangman.php:

<?php
include('functions.php');

$handle = fopen('wordsEn1.txt', 'r');
$words = array();

while(!feof($handle)) {
$words[] = trim(fgets($handle));
}

$word = choose_word($words);

echo($word);
echo('<form><input type="text" name="guess"></form>');
?>

Solution

You could use a hidden input:

<form method="POST">
    <input type="text" />
    <input type="hidden" name="word" value="<?php echo $word; ?>" />
</form>

...and on the next page:

if(isset($_POST['word'])) {
    echo $_POST['word'];
}

---

Or you could use a PHP $_COOKIE, which can be called forever (but kind of a waste if you just want it on the next page):

setcookie('word', $word, time()+3600, '/');

...and on the next page:

echo $_COOKIE['word'];

Comments

[Admin]

This will not work if the user presses F5 to refresh.