How many Cookies allowed? What is the rule?

searain

How many cookies allowed? There is a limitation about how many cookies a browser can accept from a site. What is the limitation? And if I limite the 10 cookies to the www/subfolder1 and another 10 cookies to the www/subfolder2, it is count as 10 cookies or 20 cookies in terms of the limitation?

Does how the cookie works have anything to do with the version of the browser?

I used quite a few cookies in my programming, they were running fine.

But one person report that he is using Outlook Express 5.5 on Windows 98, and he has some problems with the cookie of my site.

It seems to certain number of the cookies are fine, when he continue to process on my site, a few more cookies added and then that is the time he run into the problem. It seems that few more cookies are over the limitation.

But my question is that it seems that limitation is not over for anyone else but only for him. And his browser is accepting cookie but it seems the limitation of the cookies that his browser can use is less than others?

Could anyone help me out here?

Hui

dbchip2000

Hi,
The standards for cookies are no more than twenty cookies per server/domain. A maximum of four kilobytes per cookie. And a maximum of 300 cookies per user browser. So that one person possibly had been at maybe 292 cookies and then your web-site was only able to hand out eight and the missing two caused problems.
These are standards, and some browsers could be able to go over them, but base your programming on the standards. One way around the twenty cookie limit, is to use them as arrays, like

setcookie("cookie[one]","cookie one data");
setcookie("cookie[two]","cookie two data");

for more information, you can check out this standard specifications at http://wp.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

searain

To keep it simple, using cookie or session to pass the values among the pages is still the standard approach, right?

Are there any new rules or specifications out there right now try to put more limitations on how to use cookies?

So if I follow the cookie standard here, will my programming be out of date by these new "going to be" limitations on cookies out there? (some people said there is a trend there to put more limitations on cookies.)

If in my core programming, 5-6 cookies usage is the keystone, it is OK? any other simple approach to avoid the future problem on this issue that the specification of how can we use the cookie might change?

Or I don't have to worry about it as long as I follow the standard here.

Thanks.

dbchip2000

The page I gave you was linked to by the PHP documentation, it is kind of old (1999) but still provides some good information. I do not think you need to worry about being out of date at all by programming with cookies, if that is what you mean. Cookies are a standard means of tracking users and should be used, but I think that you should aim for as few cookies as you need, because the more cookies you add, the more information the browser must send to the server for every page a user clicks. Five to six cookies should work fine, but most sites try to use one or two to save time for the user and for some simplicity. Hope this kind of answers your questions

searain

I have set up cookie like this

setcookie("welcome_cookie", "hello world", 0, "/mysite/");

This way the cookie lives until we end it or until the browser closed.

Is it possible that due to the timezone of this client or the browser set up that the cookie expires right away on this statment? Even the browser was still on and the client didn't sign out.

dbchip2000

I do not believe so, because the browser recognizes the expiration as zero as null as until the browser closes. This is universal, but you should make sure that you use the proper capitalization since some make distinctions (ex. testing.com != TESting.cOM)

searain

My domain cookie is under 20. And many other users don't have problems. But two users on the old browser old windows system (one is on NT) still have problems. I asked them to delete the cookies cache. They did. So I guess the old reason that his total cookie is over 300 is not there anymore.

But they still have problems using my site. First few cookies fine, later on, more cookies then it get rejected.

Is there anyway a user can set his browser capacity below 20 for every domain?

Thanks!

searain

1) delete cookie

setcooke("mycookie");

will this delete cookie statement also set "mycookie" value to empty string or 0 (depends on I use it as a string variable or numeric variable)? because the cookie is deleted now.

or i have to set this cookie value back to 0 or empty string to get rid off the value before i delete it.

2) cookie array

the php book said the cookie array will solve the problem of the 20 cookie per server limitation.

use the cookie array such as mycookie[0], mycookie[1] ... mycookie[20]. it will be counted as one cookie in the term of the 20 cookies per server limitation.

did anyone has problem using the cookie array? any pitfalls i have to worry about. somehow i have problems with the cookie array and i have to use the serialize to change array to one string and save it in one cookie (instead of cookie array).

searain

what does that mean?

If I have www.mydomain1.com and www.mydomain2.com share a server, will 20 is for each or 20 is for both?

or If I have department1.mydomain.com and department2.mydomain.com (they are will its own DNS record), will the 20 is for each or 20 is for both?

Now, we are going to use several third party software, and we don't know how many cookies the third party software are using.

To avoid the third party software use too many cookies, can I set up a DNS record such as thirdparty1.mydomain.com so it will not use the capacity of 20 cookies of mydomain.com.