I have a requirement for a current project to be able access the CakePHP session data for a script which is running outside of the framework. In normal circumstances this would be as simple as:

session_name('CAKEPHP');
session_start()
print_r($_SESSION);

However in my case the session data is stored in the database. In this situation you need to do a slight bit more to retrieve the session data. Thought I would share the code here for anyone who may need it.

The data is stored in the database in a serialised form and the session_key is essentially stored in a cookie. Therefore the equivalent of the above is:

include_once('../config/database.php');
$db = new DATABASE_CONFIG();

$dbh = mysql_connect($db->default['host'],$db->default['login'],$db->default['password']);
$dbn = mysql_select_db($db->default['database'], $dbh);

$session_qry = mysql_query('SELECT `data` FROM `sessions` WHERE `id`="'.$_COOKIE['CAKEPHP'].'"', $dbh);
$session_data = mysql_result($session_qry, 0, 'data');

session_start();
session_decode($session_data);
print_r($_SESSION);

Hope this comes in useful.