PHP - setcookie(); not working

Question 1

I've made a login, that sets a cookie with a value of the imputed email address, so in the global.php file, it stores an array of the users data using:

$email = $_COOKIE["PeopleHub"];
$getuserdata = mysqli_query($con, "SELECT * FROM Earth WHERE email='$email'");
$userdata = mysqli_fetch_array($getuserdata, MYSQLI_ASSOC);

The cookie isn't being set, I know this because I made a test file:

echo $_COOKIE["PeopleHub"];

It just made a blank page.

The login code (where the cookie is set):

<?php 
include "global.php";    
?>
<h2>Login</h2>
<?php 
    echo "We currently have <b>" . $usercount . "</b> members, <b>" . $onlinecount . "</b> of which are online. "; 
?>
<br>
<br>
<?php 
    if(isset($_POST["email"])){ 
        $email = $_POST["email"];
        $password = sha1($_POST["password"]);
        $check = mysqli_query($con, "SELECT * FROM Earth WHERE `email`='$email' AND `password`='$password'");
        $check = mysqli_num_rows($check);
        if($check == 1){
        setcookie("PeopleHub", $email, 0, '/');
        echo "We logged you in!";
        }
        else { 
            echo "We couldn't log you in!";
        }
    }
?>
<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>" method="post">
    Email <input name="email" placeholder="Email Address" required="" type="text"><br>
    Password <input name="password" placeholder="Password" required="" type="password"><br>
    <input type="reset" value="Start Over">
    <input type="submit" value="Login">
</form>

Question 2

You have to set cookies before any headers are sent out.

From the manual:

setcookie() defines a cookie to be sent along with the rest of the HTTP headers. Like other headers, cookies must be sent before any output from your script (this is a protocol restriction). This requires that you place calls to this function prior to any output, including and tags as well as any whitespace.

This means you will need to look into output buffering if you wish to use this code as is.

<?php

ob_start();
echo "Hellon";

setcookie("cookiename", "cookiedata");

ob_end_flush();

?>

Depending on the contents of global.php, this might work for you. All I did was remove any output before setcookie() is called. If global.php contains any whitespace or HTML output in it this won't work:

<?php 
include "global.php";    

    if(isset($_POST["email"])){ 
        $email = $_POST["email"];
        $password = sha1($_POST["password"]);
        $check = mysqli_query($con, "SELECT * FROM Earth WHERE `email`='$email' AND `password`='$password'");
        $check = mysqli_num_rows($check);
        if($check == 1){
        setcookie("PeopleHub", $email, 0, '/');
        echo "We logged you in!";
        }
        else { 
            echo "We couldn't log you in!";
        }
    }
?>
<h2>Login</h2>
<?php 
    echo "We currently have <b>" . $usercount . "</b> members, <b>" . $onlinecount . "</b> of which are online. "; 
?>
<br>
<br>
<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>" method="post">
    Email <input name="email" placeholder="Email Address" required="" type="text"><br>
    Password <input name="password" placeholder="Password" required="" type="password"><br>
    <input type="reset" value="Start Over">
    <input type="submit" value="Login">
</form>

Question 3

PHP superglobals are populated at script start-up time, and then are NOT modified or touched by PHP again for the life of the script. That means $_COOKIE represents the cookies that were sent to the server in the http request that fired up the script. It will NOT show any cookies you've added/changed/deleted during the life of the script. Those changes will only show up on the NEXT request.

The only exception to this is $_SESSION, which is populated when you call session_start().

If you need those values to be in $_COOKIE immediately, you'll have to add them manually, e.g.

setcookie('cookie', $value, ....);
$_COOKIE['cookie'] = $value;

Question 4

Try this:

setcookie('user', 'value' ,time() + 6000, '/', 'mydomain.co.uk');

The expires Parameter needs to be a timestamp. 6000 as a timestamp is in the past and therefore removes the cookie.

Question 5

So if anyone ever stumbles on this forum because they are having the same issue let me explain what and why it went wrong.

If you include a function not in your directory(e.g c:// or file://) but instead include using http. The include can only return what was echoed in the file, but something like a variable or function will not be shown. So always include functions and variables through a directory

Question 6

Try using setcookie with a a path specified, this used to catch me out, as it assumes the current path by default. Using / will make the cookie work for the whole domain

setcookie("Username", $username, time()+3600*24*30, '/');

Question 7

<?php
$cookie_name = "test";
$cookie_value = "123";
setcookie($cookie_name, $cookie_value, time() + (86400 * 30), "/"); // 86400 = 1 day
?>

You need to write your php code like this

You can use this script If u can want particular cookie

<script>
function getCookie(cname) {
    var name = cname + "=";
    var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
    for(var i=0; i<ca.length; i++) {
        var c = ca[i];
        while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1);
        if (c.indexOf(name) == 0) return c.substring(name.length,c.length);
    }
    return "";
}

console.log(getCookie('test'));
<script>

Question 8

If you don't add a $path value to setcookie(), it defaults to "the current directory". This means that if you set the cookie from /web/DEV/Classes/SetCookie.php, the cookie gets set to /web/DEV/Classes/, and anything above that path won't see that cookie.

To fix this, add a specific $path to setcookie. If your app runs on the domain root (example.com), use '/'. If it's in a subfolder (example.com/myapp/), use '/myapp/'

setcookie("TestCookie", $var, time()+60*60*24*30, '/');

PHP - setcookie(); not working

Answers

php,cookies