Question

How do you make a SESSION cookie last for longer?

I’m using this code in the file that logs in my users:

<?
session_regenerate_id();
session_set_cookie_params(3600*24*365);
session_start();
$_SESSION['u']['id'] = xxxx;
?>

And on the rest of the site I use only session_start(); to start the session.

The cookie PHPSESSID on the client is set to expire in 365 days but if I don’t use the site for a day and come back I’m logged off. Do I have to do something else to make the cookie last longer?

Answer 1

In normal cookies, you can do this manually while setting the cookie:

setcookie($foo, $bar, time()+(3600*24*365));

However, session cookies are AUTOMAGICALLY deleted after your browser is closed (unless you are using a browser that specifically saves your sessions across runs). To be honest, if you want sessions to last longer than, well, a session, you should serialize said session with some kind of data persistence, like MySQL.