Question

I followed the answer from here but it didn’t work for me:
Is possible to keep session even after the browser is closed?

Here is the code I tried:

$session_life = 2592000; // 30 days
session_set_cookie_params($session_life);
session_name('my_cart');
session_start();
// update the session_life
setcookie(session_name(),session_id(),time()+$session_life);

The problem with this is that every time the browser is closed I still get a new session_id, not the old one.

I am using a database to store the items in ‘my_cart’ and the session_id is just used to identify the user to show them their own cart.

What is the best way for me to keep the users cart alive for 30 days?

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This is the code I ended up with:

$cart_name = "my_cart";
$cart_life = 2592000; // 30 days
session_start();
if (isset($_COOKIE[$cart_name])) {
    session_id($_COOKIE[$cart_name]);
}
setcookie($cart_name, session_id(), time()+$cart_life);

Answer 1

I’ve had to do a similar thing with a site I wrote (allow a 30 minute period for a customer to enter a code)

Rather than use a cookie (as you can’t guarantee that the customer would be returning to the site in the same browser), I stored the expiry time for the code against the user’s record. That way, whatever browser they accessed the page from (e.g., starting from mobile, finishing on a desktop), they would always expire at the same time.

When the customer returns to the site, I compare the current time to the expiry time and act accordingly

As you’re already storing the customer’s basket, I would add an expiry time against the record and then run a compare when the customer returns. It’s quite easy to do:

update basket set expiryDateTime=date_add(now(),interval 7 day) where basketID=[xyz]

If you want, you could even set the time of day to be a standard value (20:00) by using a bit more trickery in MySQL