Sessions and cookies help

just2cool

Hi,

I have been having trouble getting same the cookie for the same person.
When the visitor browse on my site, some of them gets a different cookie everytime they go to a different page.
But this does not happen to everyone, only to about 30% of the visitors.

This is my code

$link=mysql_pconnect($hostName, $userName, $password);
mysql_select_db($databaseName, $link);

if(!isset($_COOKIE["cartId"]))
{
	session_start();
	setcookie("cartId", session_id(), time()+ 3600 * 24 * 45);
//	return session_id();	
}

if (!function_exists('GetCartID'))
{
	function GetCartId()
	{

	if(isset($_COOKIE["cartId"]))
	{
	return $_COOKIE["cartId"];
	}		

	else
	{
	// There is no cookie set. We will set the cookie
	// and return the value of the users session ID

	session_start();
	setcookie("cartId", session_id(), time() + ((3600 * 24) * 45));
	return session_id();
	}		

}
}

?>

Can anyone spot something wrong here? Ive been trying to figure this out for a long time and finally I found this board. Thanks in advance.

dagon

your mixing sessions and cookies they are not the same thing, sessions store data on your server and id is passed either in url or cookie, cookie store data on user machine.

just2cool

Thanks for the reply. I apologize for not replying earlier.

I am generating a session id for each person that comes to my website, and then use that session id to be the cookie id, is that wrong?

Thanks again.

just2cool

Nobody has any idea, or has everyone gone holiday shopping? 😃

dagon

you don't need to create a cookie id at all, php takes care of that for you

just2cool

But if i don't create cookieId, how do I store the information in my database?

Can you explain what you mean by "php will take care of that"?

Thanks again!

dagon

if its in a cookie why do you want to store in a db as well?

just2cool

Let's say if I want to track the movements of the visitors, how they came to the website, etc.

Can you explain a little bit how you would do it without cookie?

Many thanks.

elibizif

You could install BBClone ... http://www.bbclone.de ... it tells who the referer is, and gives details of each visit, how many & which pages the visitor looked at & how long they stayed at your site.