Reading Cookies (extremely newbie)

jwgoerlich

I am looking for a "readcookie" function to compliment the "setcookie", but I do not suppose such a function exists. As it stands, I am trying to use the $_COOKIE. My ultimate goal is to simply write a string on one page, and read it on another.

My set code:

$name = "k";
$expire = NULL;
$path = "/";
$domain = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$secure = 0;
setcookie($name, $value, $expire, $path, $domain, $secure);

My get code:

$value = $_COOKIE['k'];

This generates the error: "Notice: Undefined index: k in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ecrg-reg\cget.php on line 4"

Any suggestions on what I am missing? Thanks in advance,

J Wolfgang Goerlich

dalecosp

OK, you don't need to be self-deprecating...it's extremely newbie. But it's solvable. 🙂

Look at your code. You have defined 5 variables.

You then call setcookie with 6 arguments.

I'm willing to bet you'll figure it out. 😉

Welcome to PHPBuilder, BTW! 😃

philipolson

Also you should set an expire time, to something like time()+999999 and there isn't a readcookie(), all cookie data exists in $COOKIE (assuming your PHP version is greater than 4.1.0). To check if a cookie exists use isset so if (isset($COOKIE['k'])) so:

if (isset($_COOKIE['k'])) {
    echo 'The cookie k exists: ' . $_COOKIE['k'];
} else {
    echo 'No cookie named k exists, do any cookies?  Let us check: ';
    print_r($_COOKIE);
}

jwgoerlich

Thanks for the tips, fellas. It was not the $value (forgot to add that to the post) or the time-out.

The symptom is caused by using localhost in the browser rather than the FQDN. Using localhost, I could not get the cookies to be read. I used the FQDN on the exact same code, it worked.

Any explanations welcome. Otherwise, I will happily use my DNS name.

J Wolfgang Goerlich

dalecosp

Hmm, curious; that's not an issue here (FreeBSD/Apache/mod_php). Are you sure you were accessing localhost via the HTTP protocol?

jwgoerlich

Are you sure you were accessing localhost via the HTTP protocol?

Quite certain. While I am a complete newbie to PHP, I have been doing web dev in ASP Classic and ASP.Net for several years. I typically test either by clicking on Browse from IIS Manager, or launching from within VS. Therefore, I was in the habit of running code using http://localhost.

Perhaps the difference is in the platform? I am hosting on Win2000 AS SP4, IIS 5.1. I am testing using IE 6.1 (patched).

Thanks,

J Wolfgang Goerlich