SetCookie Error

Anon

Good afternoon,

I have a wierd problem I thought I might post here and see if anyone has run into before (and the solution if they found it). I am using a modified versoin of PHP Helpdesk from SourceForge.net. It uses cookies to do some authentication measures and present the user who is logged in with the tickets they need. And until recently, it was working well. I suspect that my host has recently upgraded their version of PHP, but I can't be sure.

Anyway, until recently, as I stated, it was working well. Now I am getting the following error when trying to log in:

Warning: setcookie() expects parameter 3 to be long, string given in /path/to/files/helpdesk/includes/cookie.inc.php on line 8

The cookie.inc.php is actually quite a small file and I would not think that it would cause me much grief, but it is. Below is the actual code for the cookie generation script:

<?php
// Modified by Andrew Walker (ajwalker@home.com)
$time = mktime()+$g_cookietimeout;
$date = date("l, d-M-y H:i:s", ($time));

if (isset($authentication)) {
setcookie("status", $status, $date);
setcookie("user", $user, $date);
setcookie("group", $group, $date);
setcookie("authentication", $authentication, $date);
setcookie("laston", $laston, $date);
}
else {
setcookie("status", "Logged In", $date);
setcookie("user", $txtUsername, $date);
setcookie("group", $row[4], $date);
setcookie("authentication", "YES", $date);
setcookie("laston", $row[6], $date);
}
?>

Now as you can see, the third parameter that is referred to is the $date variable. That refers back to a function in which it defines the date format, which should be day, date, time...something like Monday, 17-Jun-02 11:30:00 and then it refers to the mktime command and that calls a reference to the cookie timed out which is set in the configuration script. In the configuration script, it simply adds a numeric amount of second after which time the cookie will expire, in this case 1800 seconds or a half an hour.

Now it was working...all of a sudden it's not. It makes reference that it is looking for I am guessing a long date? But what am I missing here? I have tried to set the year to a four digit year, full length on everything and I am having no luck at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cliff Warren
Webmaster for www.affiliatedvoice.com

Anon

Of course, the real question is why the behaviour would suddenly change, but have you tried putting $time (which is a long) there instead of $data? I know it's stupid and non-spec, but I have seen weirdness like this from cookies before (and it's what the manual states, which is the stupid part).

Can you ask your host if they've changed PHP lately?

bb_xpress

Thanks for the input. On the other places that I have posted, they also said the same thing. Three in a row...guess someone must know what their doing even if I don't. 🙂

I changed it and that changed the error message I am getting now, but it hasn't cured it as yet. The error I am now getting is as follows:

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/affiliat/public_html/helpdesk/includes/functions.inc.php:75) in /home/affiliat/public_html/helpdesk/includes/cookie.inc.php on line 8

For some reason it makes a call back to the functions.inc.php. I have seen this error before when I dabbled with the different settings in the cookie.inc.php and couldn't find anything that might generate such an error inside of that script. It also is relatively small in comparison to some parts of the script and its content is as below:

<?php // Global Functions

if( isset( $FUNCTIONS ) ) {
return;
}

$FUNCTIONS=1;

include("includes/connect.inc.php");

/
showSummary - Display current open tickets and open tickets for
the current user.
/

function showSummary() {
global $user, $mysql_link;
$openTickets = 0;
$userTickets = 0;

$query = "SELECT events.e_id, events.t_id, events.e_status, " .
"events.e_assignedto, ticket.t_id FROM events,ticket " .
" WHERE events.t_id = ticket.t_id ORDER BY " .
" events.t_id, events.e_id;";
$result = query( $query );

$row = mysql_fetch_row( $result );

$prev_e_id = $row[0];

$prev_t_id = $row[1];

$prev_e_status = $row[2];

$prev_e_assignedto = $row[3];

$done = 0;
while( !$done ) {
$row = mysql_fetch_row( $result );
if( !$row ) {
$done = 1;
}

   $e_id = $row[0];  
   $t_id = $row[1];  
   $e_status = $row[2];  
   $e_assignedto = $row[3];

   if( $t_id != $prev_t_id ) {
       if( $prev_e_status == "OPEN" ) {
       $openTickets++;
       if( $prev_e_assignedto == $user && isset($user) )
           $userTickets++;
   }
   }

   $prev_e_id = $e_id;
   $prev_t_id = $t_id;
   $prev_e_status = $e_status;
   $prev_e_assignedto = $e_assignedto;

}

print "Open Tickets: $openTickets<br>\n";
print "Assigned to you: $userTickets<br>\n";
}

/
query( $queryString ) Execute query on MySQL and report any errors

If $debug flag is set in config/general.conf.php, some debugging
information is printed such as the SQL statement sent to the back end.
/
function query( $q ) {
global $mysql_link;
global $debug;

if( $debug >= 1 )
    echo "<br>Executed SQL:  <b>$q</b>";

$result = mysql_query( $q, $mysql_link );

unset( $error );
$error = mysql_error( $mysql_link );
if( $error )
    echo "<br><b>SQL ERROR: </b>$error<br>";

if( $debug >= 1 )
echo " (" . (0+mysql_affected_rows($mysql_link)) . " rows affected.)<br>";

return $result;

}

/
heading( $headingText )

This function prints a heading on the page. This is intended to
make a consistant heading style for all pages within the helpdesk.
/
function heading( $text, $center ) {
if( $center ) print "<center>";
print "<hr><h1>$text</h1><hr>";
if( $center ) print "</center>";
}

/
timestampToUnix( $timestamp )

Converts a MySQL timestamp to a unix integer date.
*/

function timestampToUnix( $t ) {
$YYYY = $MM = $DD = $hh = $mm = 0;

$YYYY = "$t[0]$t[1]$t[2]$t[3]";
$MM = "$t[4]$t[5]";
$DD = "$t[6]$t[7]";
$hh = "$t[8]$t[9]";
$mm = "$t[10]$t[11]";

return strtotime("$YYYY-$MM-$DD $hh:$mm:00");

}

Now if I can figure this out and lock the problem down, I can put this thing back together again. Never realize how much you are dependent on something until its broke.

In answer to your question, yes, they did change something recently. I know that they said a couple of weeks ago they upgraded the PHP version to 4.2 because of security holes in the previous version. I had thought that the most recent version was 4.6, but maybe I am offbase. In any case, if someone out there can see something I don't, I would greatly appreciate it.

Cliff Warren
Service Manager and Webmaster
www.affiliatedvoice.com

bb_xpress

Eureka!!

Guys, I can't tell you how great you guys are! It's working again. Turns out that the second error I was getting was in relation to the fact that I had turned debugging on yesterday when the problem first presented itself. Another codemaster on another board looked at the above script and pointed it out saying that that might be causing the problem. I turned debugging back off again and then ran the script after changing the references in the cookie.inc.php from $date to $time and got an error message stating that the line was expected to be long in lines 10, 11 and 12, which I though was strange considering if it had been the original error in its entirety, it would have started at line 8. I went back into the cookie.inc.php and found that I had missed one reference to the variable at line 10 and that was tripping the rest of the program on the way down. Reset that one to point to the $time variable and it worked!

Only tradeoff is that the debugging doesn't work, but hey, I can live with that! It isn't as though debugging was a lot of help anyway as it simply displayed all of the output for each step, came up on the error and displayed that and then kept right on asteppin'!

Anyway, it's cured! Thanks for the input guys! You all don't know how much you saved my bacon! Over the course of the last several months we have become VERY dependent on this helpdesk and it has been HEAVILY modified to make it do what we need it to do with the introduction of several new scripts to do extended company information, loaner device tracking, customer information modification, etc. LOTS of work. I did NOT relish the idea of having to start over again and with the fact that we had some 50 open tickets in that database and another 500 closed that we needed to keep reference to, you can imagine how nervous I was beginning to get!

Anyway, between the input here and other places, it's fixed! Can't tell you guys how much I owe ya!! Thanks again!

Cliff Warren
Service Manager and Webmaster
www.affiliatedvoice.com