Question

I am setting two cookies in PHP in my root directory

   setcookie ("st", "$todays_system_date"  );
   setcookie ("en", "$tomorrow" );

My problem is I need to set them again in a script that is in a deeper folder eg: /diary/
When I do set them and then try to read them or look at the cookies set , I find I have 2x en and 2x st cookies .

My question is how can I make reference to just one set of cookies ? and read them ?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Cookies are key/value pairs – they will only ever have a single value in any given scope.

However:

• It is possible to have more than one cookie with the same key and different values for the same domain (although it will still only have one effective value in any given scope).

For example, if you set the cookie st in the root (/) with the value 1, and in /diary/ with value 2, the two cookies will exist in their own right. When you are in the / directory (or any subdirectory of / that is not /diary/ or a subdirectory of /diary/) the value will be 1. When you are in /diary/ or a subdirectory of /diary/ if will be 2:

Directory         Cookie Value
/                      1
/somedir/              1
/diary/                2
/diary/subdir          2
/somedir/diary/        1

• It is possible to set the same cookie twice in the same scope, but only the later value will be effective – the later value overrides the earlier value.

For example:

setcookie('st',1); // st is now 1 for the current path
setcookie('st',2); // st is now 2 for the current path

If you look at the HTTP response message that is sent by PHP you will see 2 Set-Cookie: headers for the key st. However, on the next request within the cookie’s scope, only the later value 2 will be sent back to the server.