In web development, sessions are used to store data temporarily on the server side. This data can be accessed across multiple pages and requests, making it useful for storing user-specific information such as login status, shopping cart contents, and language preferences.
To ensure that a session exists before accessing its data, it is necessary to check if a session has been started for the current user. This can be done using various programming languages and frameworks. For example, in PHP, the `session_start()` function can be used to start a session and check if one already exists.