Shorter way to set a cookie

Ethan22

Hello it just seems real long and I don't know how to shorten this. Is there a real short way to
1. check to see if cookie 'a' is set,
2. if the cookie is not set yet, to set a cookie 'a' to 1 and with a cookie expiration.
Please let me know thank you. :o

if(!isset($_COOKIE["a"])){//Check if cookie set, if not set to 1.
setcookie("a", 1, time()+60*60*24*730);}
if(isset($_COOKIE["a"])){
$a=$_COOKIE["a"];}

bradgrafelman

Well the second if() statement could be eliminated entirely, since all you're doing is duplicating a variable's value in another variable.

As for the first if() statement, it seems to be as short as possible given what you want to do. To be honest, I fail to see how one two short lines of PHP code is "real long" by any measurement.

EDIT: Okay, technically you could shorten it down to something like:

isset($_COOKIE['a']) ?: setcookie("a", 1, time()+60*60*24*730);

but that just seems more obfuscated (and thus harder to read and understand) than:

if(!isset($_COOKIE['a'))
    setcookie("a", 1, time()+60*60*24*730);

(which is quite easy to read and understand).

Ethan22

Because I see there must be some redundancy same as you do. I'm trying to learn the best way to do it nothing wrong with wanting to know the best way it's done. So do others agree that all that is needed is this?

if(!isset($_COOKIE["a"])){//Check if cookie set, if not set to 1.
setcookie("a", 1, time()+606024*730);}

I don't want to be causing a problem I can't see by removing all that, thanks a lot.

bradgrafelman

At some point there is a trade-off between writing code that is as short and concise as humanly possible rather than leaving it in a state that is easy to work with.

My point was that your simple if() statement is about as short as you can get without crossing that point.

Ethan22

If anyone disagrees I shouldn't be removing something let me know. I'll mark it resolved if no one does. Thank you!

NogDog

Maybe you first need to answer: is there any functional requirement to check if the cookie is set before setting it again? If you just go ahead and set it on each page access, then its expiration time will keep updating. If you only set it when it does not exist, then eventually it will expire (or the user will delete it or whatever) at which point you'll resend it again.

There may well be a reason to not resend it automatically but only if it does not exist; but if there is no reason, then the simpler solution is just to set it each time, bumping back its expiration time that much more into the future.

Ethan22

Yes I needed to really pick at that thank you to get right to the whole root of it also.

So are you saying there's no need for anyone to really ask if a cookie is even set. I've thought about a lot of people seem to do that too. Are you saying no one needs to ask that, since it's usually not there at the beginning, just say 'set the darned cookie' : ).

However I suppose an 'if' is necessary sometimes for the code to keep going, when the cookie really IS already set. Let me know if I misconstrued your point.

NogDog

I guess what I was ultimately getting at was the idea from eXtreme Programming of doing the simplest thing that works. If there is no functional requirement that needs to base whether or not to set the cookie based on whether or not it's already set, then the simplest thing to do is just set it without bothering to check. But that does not mean there may not be a good reason in some situations to only set it if not received from the browser -- so it is situation-dependent, and there's probably no single answer that will be right in every case.