Cookie Question

Anon

I have developed a site that allows a user to log in. Now, I would like to use cookies to remember their username and their encrypted password so that they could return and already be logged in. I would like to know what the best way would be to achieve this.

ace21

You need to read up on cookies in the php manual. It tells you how to set them, for how long to keep them and how to delete them. look up setcookie()

Ace21

Anon

I followed the instructions in the manual and I got the following code:

setcookie ("TestCookie", "username");
setcookie ("TestCookie", "password");
setcookie ("TestCookie", $value,time()+3600); / expire in 1 hour /
echo $TestCookie;
echo $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS["TestCookie"];

This code doesn't seem to be printing the cookie values. I would like for the cookie values to be printed on every page on the site. Is this possible? I have never worked with cookies before, so I don't know many things regarding them.

Anon

I have limited experience with cookies, but it seems to me each parameter needs to have its own name - and its expiration affixed to each - for example:

setcookie ("TestCookie1", "username", time()+3600);
setcookie ("TestCookie2", "password", time()+3600);

echo $TestCookie1;
echo $TestCookie2;

etc...otherwise you're over-riding the username with the password.

Hope this helps.

-Broseed

Anon

The problem that I've been having is that I can't decode the cookies after their set. If i create a file and use only the following code...

setcookie ("TestCookie1", "username", time()+3600);
setcookie ("TestCookie2", "password", time()+3600);

echo $TestCookie1;
echo $TestCookie2;

...nothing will get printed to the screen. I have tried everything, but it doesn't seem to work.

BTW, cookies are enabled in my browser.

Anon

I remember reading recently that a cookie cannot be read from the same page that set it - I think (and this is where I'm on shaky ground) that a cookie is only presented to the server when the page is first requested by the browser, and as you're setting the cookie after the page is served, the server/process/php/whatever has not received the values from the browser and therefore cannot echo them to the screen.

There are two solutions:
1 - When setting the cookie, copy its value to another variable and then echo that variable rather than the cookie.

2 - (much better) jump to another script when you've set the cookie and then echo $TestCookie1, etc. will work.

Hope this helps.

Anon

Thanks,

That worked for me. All that I had to do was call the cookie up from another page on the site.

Anon

The problem that I'm facing now is that the cookie would be set and read fine by my web host's server, but it won't work on my home system. Is there any configuration that I need to change with apache?

Anon

You can't reference the cookie until a new page is loaded. That is to stay if you set a cookie you can't view what it is set to until you go to another page. After that you can view until the expiration runs out or until you delete it.
Hope this helps

Ace21

Anon

how can I set the cookie 7 days?

Anon

well, if 3600 is one hour, than 7 days would be ((3600 24) 7) = 604800 :

setcookie ("TestCookie1", "username", time()+604800);

-Broseed