Cookies aren't persisting in PHP?

Question 1

How do I get the cookies to persist in php?

give_cookie.php

<?php
    if (!isset($_COOKIE["muffin"]))
        setcookie("muffin", "55", 100 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30);
    $_COOKIE["lid"]=true;
?>

jar.php

<?php
    var_dump($_COOKIE);
    if($_COOKIE["lid"])
        echo "open";
?>

Running the code in that order gives me output:

array(0) { } Notice: Undefined index: lid in jar.php on line 3

Embedding the code from jar.php in give_cookie.php gives me output:

array(1) { ["lid"]=> bool(true) } open

Question 2

You're supposed to give a UNIX timestamp of when the cookie will expired (calculated since the epoch) as the third argument to the function call.

The time the cookie expires. This is a Unix timestamp so is in number of seconds since the epoch. In other words, you'll most likely set this with the time() function plus the number of seconds before you want it to expire. Or you might use mktime(). time()+60*60*24*30 will set the cookie to expire in 30 days. If set to 0, or omitted, the cookie will expire at the end of the session (when the browser closes).

I suggest you read the documentation for setcookie.

Question 3

I think its better to make one file set cookie and redirect to another file. Then the next file can check the value and determine if cookie is enabled. See the example.

Create two files, cookiechecker.php and stat.php

// cookiechecker.php
// save the referrer in session. if cookie works we can get back to it later.
session_start();
$_SESSION['page'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
// setting cookie to test
setcookie('foo', 'bar', time()+3600);
header("location: stat.php");

and

stat.php

<?php if(isset($_COOKIE['foo']) && $_COOKIE['foo']=='bar'): 
// cookie is working
session_start();
// get back to our old page
header("location: {$_SESSION['page']}");
else:            // show the message ?>
cookie is not working
<? endif; ?>

Load cookiechecker.php in browser it'll tell cookie is working. Call it with command line like curl. It'll say, cookie is not working

Update

Here is a single file solution.

session_start();

if (isset($_GET['check']) && $_GET['check'] == true) {
    if (isset($_COOKIE['foo']) && $_COOKIE['foo'] == 'bar') {
        // cookie is working
        // get back to our old page
        header("location: {$_SESSION['page']}");
    } else {
        // show the message "cookie is not working"
    }
} else {
    // save the referrer in session. if cookie works we can get back to it later.
    $_SESSION['page'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
   // set a cookie to test
    setcookie('foo', 'bar', time() + 3600);
    // redirecting to the same page to check 
    header("location: {$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}?check=true");
}

Question 4

Two things I can think of:

a) localhost is not a valid domain, so cookies won't be saved for all browsers. Create yourself a HOST for "my.dev.server" or "localhost.dev" and point to 127.0.0.1 (you may also need to configure apache to respond to that name - but try it first just changing the HOSTS file first)

b) In addition, your "domain" includes a scheme and a path - that might be causing problems? Set to "localhost.dev" (drop the "http://" and the "/tvc" parts - once you've moved away from localhost.

Question 5

Have you tried:

print_r($_COOKIE)

Question 6

A cookie has a lifetime, after which it will expire (As denoted by the Expires directive). If you don't set a timeout, the browser will expire the cookie when you close the browser. This is called a session cookie.

These kind of cookies are often used to track a users current session state on the server side (E.g. php's sessions), but there is not a strong relation between the two uses of the word "session"

Cookies aren't persisting in PHP?

How do I get the cookies to persist in php?

Answers

Update

php,cookies,session-cookies,setcookie