Cookie problem

LeeD

I have a general question about cookies. What I want to do is set three cookies (user id, password and level). Can I do that without having an array? Here is the code I'm using:

$hold = 60 60 24 * 180;
if ($pwdSQL == $pwd)
{
// validated user - write cookie and continue
setcookie("user", "$id", $hold);
setcookie("level", "$lvlSQL", $hold);
setcookie("authorized", "yes", $hold);
header("Location: http://www.mokenahickorycreek.com/SQL_Staff.php");
exit;
}
else
{
setcookie("user", "guest", $hold);
setcookie("level", "0", $hold);
setcookie("authorized", "no", $hold);
header("Location: http://www.mokenahickorycreek.com/index.php");
exit;
}

TIA, Lee

bradgrafelman

You could use three separate cookies, or:

Cookies names can be set as array names and will be available to your PHP scripts as arrays but separate cookies are stored on the users system. Consider explode() or serialize() to set one cookie with multiple names and values.

(Quote taken from the manual)

Alternatively, you could make a really simple "list", i.e.

userid,password,level

And then use [man]explode/man in conjunction with [man]list/man to create $userid, $pass, $level

LeeD

I read the explode thing, but didn't really get it. At my age I'm lucky to get any of this.

I think you said I could have three cookies however. That would work for me if I could get the cookies to write. Perhaps the problem is you can't write three cookies at all. I'll test that by commenting out two of them and see if a file is recreated....

Nope, that didn't work either. I have created cookies using PHP and don't understand why it isn't working now (therefore I do have cookies enabled). But as a newbie I'm probably making some silly mistake.

bradgrafelman

How do you know they aren't working? What code are you using to test them?

LeeD

Originally posted by bradgrafelman
How do you know they aren't working? What code are you using to test them?

I look in the cookie directory to see if one has been created.

bradgrafelman

Try making a test PHP page with just some simple calls to setcookie()

LeeD

Originally posted by bradgrafelman
Try making a test PHP page with just some simple calls to setcookie()

I'll give that a try.

LeeD

I stipped the page down to almost nothing and tried it. It didn't work. But that got me to looking at it closer. Found the mistake and just as I expected, it was a stupid mistake by the operator - me!

For anyone else reading this, if you look at the original code I posted, it included the following (see if you can find the error):

  $sql_code  = "SELECT Password, Level FROM $name_table ";
   $sql_code .= "WHERE ID = '$id'";

// testing only
// echo $sql_code . "<br><br>";

   $sql_result = mysql_query($sql_code,$name_connect) or die(mysql_error());
   $output = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result);

   $pwdSQL = $output["Password"];
   $lvlSQL = $output["Level"];

// testing only
// echo "sql pwd: '" . $pwdSQL . "'<br>sql lvl: '" . $lvlSQL . "'<br>rows: '" . mysql_num_rows($sql_result) . "'<br>post pwd: '" . $pwd . "'<br>post id: '" . $id . "'<br>";

   // set cookie time limit - 180 days
   $hold = 60 * 60 * 24 * 180;
   if ($pwdSQL == $pwd)
    {
     // validated user - write cookie and continue
     setcookie("user", $id, $hold);
     setcookie("level", "$lvlSQL", $hold);
     setcookie("authorized", "yes", $hold);
     header("Location: [url]http://www.mokenahickorycreek.com/SQL_Staff.php[/url]");
     exit;
    }
   else
    {
     setcookie("user", "guest", $hold);
     setcookie("level", "0", $hold);
     setcookie("authorized", "no", $hold);
     header("Location: [url]http://www.mokenahickorycreek.com/index.php[/url]");
     exit;
    }
  }
 else
  {

// testing only
// echo "post variables id: '" . $_POST["id"] . "'<br>pwd: '" . $_POST["pwd"] . "'<br>post pwd: '" . $pwd . "'<br>";

  }

OK, give up? The variable to set the time limit was missing one important part. The time to now to which the future time was to be added. It was always timed out as soon as it was written. The system may not have even written it when it saw the expiration date.

Thanks for your (and everyone elses) help. I might have flailed around for every. Or more probably I would have dumped cookies and just checked the database each time. But that wouldn't have answered the question even if it worked around it.