Can't set Future Expiration for Cookie

siteturbo

Hello,

I am having trouble setting a cookie. I am using PHP Version 5.1.6.

Here is my code:

$expire = time() + 606024*30; // 30 days
setcookie("TestCookie",$value, $expire);

The cookie gets set, however, the cookie is not persistent and expires when I close my browser. This should not be the case but should expire in 30 days.

Can someone please help.

thanks.

bradgrafelman

Did you try outputting time() and verifying that the server time is correct?

Also, have you tried viewing the actual HTTP header that the server sends to your browser and check the expiration date there?

siteturbo

The time() is correct on the server.

Here is the raw http headers:

Status: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:12:27 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6
Set-Cookie: TestCookie=my+cookie+value; expires=Mon, 25-Apr-2011 15:12:27 GMT
Content-Length: 126
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

However, when I open Firefox or Chrome they both say that the cookie will expire when I close the browser. I know that my browser is accepting cookies properly because I see other cookies from other websites in the cookie list that expire with future dates.

siteturbo

I've tried setting a cookie in the future with javascript and it works fine, like the following:

$jsExpire = date("D, j M Y H:i:s e", $expire);
echo "
<script>
</script>
";

However, when still trying to set the cookie (before headers are sent which is how php operates), php fails to set the cookie properly.

siteturbo

Is there any kind of setting in php ini that could effect cookie expiration dates?

Obviously it's not a browser problem since I can set cookies correctly with javascript but not php.

siteturbo

I even tried sending cookie with header() like this and it doesn't set in the future:

header("Set-Cookie: TestCookie=my+cookie+value; expires=Mon, 25-Apr-2011 17:26:45 GMT; path=/; domain=.mydomain.com");

😕

bradgrafelman

Can you give us a link to this page by any chance?

dgreenhouse

I just read that php v5.1.6 had problems if you set the httponly flag to true and there were a host of other problems.
I don't know if this relates to your issue.
I've tried your code on my server and it works fine.

siteturbo

Thanks for the possible issue for v5.1.6. I'm not even setting the httponly field in the setcookie() function. In fact, I don't think the httponly field is avialable until v.5.2.x