dumb cookie question

Anon

This question is kind of dumb (maybe I'm dumb ;-) )
I can set a cookie, I can delete a cookie!
Is the cookie refreshed by my sending it again? So let's say: I send a cookie which expires in a month. The visitor visit again in a week. If I send him an identical cookie,(don't delete the old one first) will the cookie "refresh" as it were?

Thanks. I searched the web, but it must be obvious to everyone, so nobody seems to write on it.

Anon

I don't know the answer to your question, but perhaps you could try it and post your results here? Seems like the experiment would be simple enough.

Anon

Ok. I've been looking around and I've been trying. One solution, people seem to opt for is deleting and creating the cookie.

// create the new one
setcookie("testcookie", "NewValue");

// delete the old one
setcookie("testcookie");

Important here is the order, which is counter intuitive. First set the new cookie and the second setcookie will delete the old on, because they seem to be handled in the reverse order.

marcel

if you set cookie with a new value (or other expires time) ... the old one will be replaced...

you don't have to delete old one ...

try something like this scenario:

set a cookie
check the cookies with phpinfo() function... read manual
set again, the same cookie
check again with phpinfo()

Anon

More Testing

I went to the cookies directory and checked for changes in the files. That seems to give the answer. I'm not a cook, so i don't know what all the numbers in the cookie mean but i observed the following:
1.)To reset a cookie by simply sending one with the same name does not seem to work. No change is found in the cookie which should be there if the time value was reset.
2.) first setting and then deleting as I suggested in my previous post does not work for me. I got the suggestion from this address: http://perl.about.com/library/weekly/aa051600d.htm
but it doesn't work for me. I leaves me with no cookie! Maybe something has changed in PHP since the article was written 1,5 years ago.
3.)If I first delete and then reset the cookie it works. In the cookie saved to my harddisk I found "wild" changes in the numbers as I refreshed the page which uses them.

So far. If anyone knows about this stuff, drop a note here

marcel

I'm not a cook, too.
But ... maybe the browser saves the cookies on HDD when you close it.

so, the best idea is to check into an HTML (PHP) page with phpinfo().