Is $_COOKIE linked to a directory?

davidfcarr

I have a group of forms in my /forms directory that set a cookie on the users machine. But I've found that the variable
$_COOKIE['Name'] is empty if I try to access it from another directory on the same Web site. I'm puzzled because I thought cookies were associated with the base url for the site, not a particular directory. But if I'm wrong about that, is there a way to access the cookie variable from another directory, such as /sales ?

superwormy

Cookies can be set with a path, yes.

My experience has been that setting cookies with a path is buggy and not supported under a lot of browsers.

Beyond that... I don't know, sorry...

kevinsequeira

from the manual

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php

bool setcookie ( string name [, string value [, int expire [, string path [, string domain [, int secure]]]]])

path :
The path on the server in which the cookie will be available on. If set to '/', the cookie will be available within the entire domain. If set to '/foo/', the cookie will only be available within the /foo/ directory and all sub-directories such as /foo/bar/ of domain. The default value is the current directory that the cookie is being set in.

domain:
The domain that the cookie is available. To make the cookie available on all subdomains of example.com then you'd set it to '.example.com'. The . is not required but makes it compatible with more browsers. Setting it to www.example.com will make the cookie only available in the www subdomain.

reg
kevin

superwormy

As a note, if you look at the Netscape Cookie Specification ( search Google ) it provides a real good overview of exactly how to set a cookie and what it is, and you don't need to rely on PHP's set_cookie() function, you can just set one with header()

Sometimes its easier to just use header(), you have a littlemore control over things sometimes.

davidfcarr

I see my mistake -- I should have specified path as "/" in setcookie to make it apply to the whole site. The fix I'm in now is that I have a bunch of users whose cookies are set to "/forms/" and those cookies are only accessible from there or subdirectories of that site. So is there any way out of the hole I've dug myself other than resetting all the cookies?