-----Original Message----- From: David T-G Sent: Sunday, May 9, 2004, 6:09:06 AM > Hi, all --
> I guess I need a primer on cookie usage. I've read the manual regarding > setcookie and have gone back to look at everything having to do with > cookies on this list in the past few months (it seems that I'm not the > only one with some troubles, but most of them appear to have been having > sent some HTML output before trying to set a cookie). > I want to check to see if the user has my cookie to then log him in > automatically, and if he doesn't then I show the login screen and he logs > in and then I set the cookie if the box is checked. > Of course, $_COOKIE is set, so I have to check for my cookie name. Even > something as simple as > $_COOKIE['test'] = 'tested'; Under normal circumstances you don't need to do that (unless you know what you are doing - but it will not set a cookie on the client side, it only modifies your superglobal variable for as long as the script runs. I guess I'm once again stating the obvious). > followed by a load of the page and a print doesn't show it. > Do I only call setcookie if the cookie isn't set, or do i call it every > time I load the page to initialize it? Once I set it, how do I read it? Once you setcookie() you can optionally give it something on its way: like name, value, expire time/date, etc. You could for example set a cookie to expire in half an hour - i.e. for a session. It might make sense to refresh that cookie on every page request, so that a session timeout will be postponed on each refresh. If you omit the expire time, it will be valid until the end of the session (browser closes) - see the docs. How do you get your cookie back? If your visitor has a browser that allows cookies and you already sent him one (or more) before, he will automatically transmit it to you as part of the HTTP request headers. PHP does its magic and places the values received into that Superglobal $_COOKIE (as well as $_REQUEST) for you to play with... So, if that array is empty that could mean two things: 1) you didn't send any cookie before (either because you already sent your headers and thus have a f***up in your code or because the visitor hasn't been to your page before) 2) the visitor does not allow cookies - too bad. I guess that's all there is to it. Someone correct me or add to that :) > Does anyone have any pointers to a basic tutorial? I didn't use any other page except the obvious one ... http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php I hope that answers at least part of what you were looking for ... Richard -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
