Cookies are driving me insane.

[sunit_modi]

Guys please help!

Hi,

Basically i need some help with my cookies.
The problems are pretty basic:

I am writing a shopping cart application where the user clicks on add item and surprise surprise, the data is set in a cookie and displayed in a table resembling a shopping cart.

so the following happens:

the page containing the product information
......
......
echo ("<tr><td><a href='setbasket.php?select_item_no=$myrow[0]'><img src='addtobasket.gif' border=0></a><td><tr>");
......
......

so when the user clicks on it, it goes to the script setbasket.php with the variable $select_item_no assigned a value.

setbasket.php

if (!$total_items) {
$total_items=1;
setcookie("item_number[$total_items]", $select_item_no);
setcookie("quantity[$total_items]", "1");
setcookie("total_items", $total_items);
} else {
$i=0;
while ($i < $total_items) {
if ($select_item_no==$item_number[$i]) {
$cookie_trigger=1;
} else {
$cookie_trigger=0;
}
$i=$i+1;
}
}

if ($cookie_trigger==1){
echo ("duplicate");
// echo("<META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\" CONTENT=\"0; URL=basket.php\">");
}

if ($cookie_trigger==0){
$total_items++;
setcookie("item_number[$total_items]", $select_item_no);
setcookie("quantity[$total_items]", "1");
setcookie("total_items", $total_items);
echo ("no duplicate");
// echo("<META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Refresh\" CONTENT=\"0; URL=basket.php\">");
}

So i hear you ask, whats the problem?

First Problem

Basically i have noticed that if the cookie is empty ( the first if statement) when i assign a value and display to all cookies there is no data in any of them apart from the variable total_items. So basically the user will need to submit the item they wish to add to the basket twice if the basket is empty on the first submit.

Second Problem
Basically i dont want the cookie to have duplicated information stored in it, so i wrote the while statement above that checks the information in the cookie against the select_item_no that was submited by the user.

This works when the user clicks on a product A repeatedly, but when user clicks on product B with a different select_item_no, and then goes back to product A and click on that item, the information is duplicated.

can anyone help, this is driving me mad.
I applogies in advance in poor programming code and technique, still new to it.

I hope i am making sense since i have no idea whats going on.

Many Thanks

Sunit

😕 😕 🙁

[sunit_modi]

OK, problem 1 solved, it was basically the for loop, should of set the start point to 1 instead of 0.

I still have the 2nd problem.
In addition i have the following issue:

Basically if a user submits product A, then the value of product A is stored in the cookie array.

But when the user submits product B, then the value of product A is still added to the cookie array where the product B should be added.

Can any one help?
Here is the code -

$total_items=$total_items+1;
$cookie_value=$select_item_no;
setcookie("item_number[$total_items]", $cookie_value);
setcookie("quantity[$total_items]", "1");
setcookie("total_items", $total_items);
echo ("CURRENT VALUE = $cookie_value");
for($i=1;$i<$total_items; $i++) {
	$count=$i;
	echo ("<br>count = $count <br>");
	echo ("total items: $total_items<br>");
	echo ("item No= $item_number[$i] <br />");
	echo ("quantity= $quantity[$i] <br />");
}

which gives the following output.

CURRENT VALUE = 5026535505129

total items: 2
item No= 0028947225621
quantity= 1

total items: 2
item No= 0028947225621 // should be 5026535505129.
quantity= 1

Any Thoughts ??/

Many Thanks

Sunit

😕 😕 😕 😕 😕 😕

[Mega]

man u r one messy coder 😉

have u considered using sessions?

and im too lazy at this time of the morning to translate ur code into something readable.

🙂

[sunit_modi]

yep... going for sessions now, cookies have seriously got on my nerves.

Anyone know any basic php session tutorials?

Sunit

[TodManPlaa]

There are loads of session tutorials out there, I found this one to be one of the better ones:

c/- Zend
Session Handling with PHP 4
by Tobias Ratchiller
http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/session.php

hope this helps

/s