customer session is empty in custom module magento -

i have made custom module uses customer session, strange, on live site not returning customer data. have tried following methods:

$sesscustomer = mage::getsingleton('customer/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));     echo '<pre>';print_r($sesscustomer->getcustomer()->getdata()); echo '</pre>';exit; 

it returns:

array (     [website_id] => 1 ) 

if print customer session:

mage::getsingleton('customer/session')->getdata(); 

this returns (exact output):

     array( [_session_validator_data] => array         (             [remote_addr] => 58.65.183.10             [http_via] =>              [http_x_forwarded_for] => 58.65.183.10             [http_user_agent] => mozilla/5.0 (x11; ubuntu; linux i686; rv:16.0) gecko/20100101 firefox/16.0         )      [session_hosts] => array             (                 [bestevalue.info] => 1             )     [messages] => mage_core_model_message_collection object             (                 [_messages:protected] => array                     (                     )                  [_lastaddedmessage:protected] =>              )     [id] =>  ) 

i exhausted here , logged in, can see customer dashboard customer info on not been able use session in custom module, please guide me how fix this.

update:

i have checked in /app/etc/local.xml session type file

<session_save><![cdata[files]]></session_save> 

so there different method of extracting session info php ? doing wrong?

update 2:

i have used router make pretty url public function match(zend_controller_request_http $request)

on start of action placed

mage::getsingleton('core/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));

but still not working router without 1 working example directly accessing action :

site.com/module/controller/action

it works not router. thoughts? thanks,

the solution simple:

private function _getcustomersession() {     mage::getsingleton('core/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));     return mage::getsingleton('customer/session'); } 

this initializes session , returns it. call function this:

$this->_getcustomersession()->getcustomer() 

and have data available.

update googlers , future reference: had issue again today , own solution didn't work (like question). further investigation revealed have overridden predispatch() function in custom module check if module enabled in backend , if not redirect homepage error. in case solution -obviously- call parent::predispatch();