Question

I have a page (mypage.html) which sets a cookie as follows:

setcookie ("sessionid", md5 (uniqid (rand())));

Now, at the top of an include which displays the site header I have the following:

echo "cookie is ". $_COOKIE['sessionid'];

When I am on mypage.html, which includes the header, the echo command displays the cookie name, as it should…e.g.

cookie is 4d40102ff2d2268d907dd31debc411e2 cookie is 4d40102ff2d2268d907dd31debc411e2

But if I move aeway from the page which set the cookie, all I see is

cookie is

with no name – If I go back to mypage.html it reads it again with no problem. I have no clue how this can happen?? Any ideas?

Answer 1

Set an explicit path for the cookie. The default is the current directory only, so if you navigate to a script in another directory, the cookie won’t be sent back by the browser.

// Cookie is valid for all paths ( / ) in the current domain
// This also has an explicit expiry time of 1 hour from the time it's set...
setcookie ("sessionid", md5 (uniqid (rand())), time() + 3600, "/");

It’s a little unusual to be setting your own session cookies though, when simply initiating a session handles it for you:

session_start();
// Id is set for you...
echo session_id();