[RESOLVED] Cookies Disappearing (not expiring)

OahuRE

It seems like IE is only holding a certain amount of cookies. I have the following code which should write out 19 cookies, but when I run it cookies 1 through 9 are missing. I have tried many things but I can't keep the cookies from disappearing.

You can execute it from my Website at http://www.oahure.com/test.php Any ideas?

<?php
//Input
$i=1;
while ($i < 20)
{
setcookie("A".$i,$i);
setcookie("B".$i,$i);

// Enable to clear cookies
// setcookie("A".$i,'');
// setcookie("B".$i,'');

$i++;

}
//Output
$i=1;
while ($i < 20)
{
echo $COOKIE["A".$i].' '.$COOKIE["B".$i].'<br>';
$i++;
}

dagon

it's outputting 20 cookies your code is writing 40 a1-20 and b1-20

Only the last 20 (a10-a20, b10-b20) are kept, it's the ie 20 cookie per site limit

why any one needs 20 cookies for a site is beyond me.

B.

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bradgrafelman

dagon wrote:
why any one needs 20 cookies for a site is beyond me.

Especially since this is contained within one script... why not use one single cookie to hold all of the information?

OahuRE

I did not realize there was a limit to 20 cookies per site. I read through a lot of cookie information and never came across that limit. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

What I was attempting to do is save the timestamp and their search so they could always see there last 20 searches including the date and time they performed the search. This required 20 timestamp cookies and 20 search parameter cookies. I was attempting to do this for them without forcing them to log into my site.

As far as I know cookies would be the only solution but if there is another solution any suggestions would be great. Right now I am using Sessions but of course all data is lost when the session ends, which is not what I want.

OahuRE

One cookie would work although a cookie can't do an array so I guess I would need to use some type of delimiter to separate my data. If that is the best option I will do it.

Thanks.

bradgrafelman

Why not just create an array:

$myArray[time()] = $searchterm;

Of course, you'd have to use [man]count/man to see if there were already 20 items in the array and, if so, [man]unset/man the earliest timestamp.

After you do all that, you'd store the entire array in the cookie using [man]serialize/man. On the next page when you want to re-create the array in PHP, you'd of course use [man]unserialize[/man].

EDIT:

OahuRE wrote:
although a cookie can't do an array

Aha, there's where you're wrong. Guess we posted at the same time :p

OahuRE

Wow, I tried saving an array to a cookie and got an error message so I assumed it would not work. Serialize() sounds like a great solution.

Thanks.