Question

I have a small basic website with certain pages users can only view when they are logged in. There’s only 1 username and password because the site is for just a few people and security isnt a major issue. Anyway, when the user types in the correct Username and password and submits, a cookie is set in the code and the page is reloaded. But it still shows the content as if the user werent logged in. When I press the sumbit button again or just click to another page, the content is shown correctly (more items in the navigation bar). I cant find out why it wont show the items the first time.

The top of the login page:

    if (isset($_POST['reg'])){
    if ($form_errors = validate_form()) {
        show_form($form_errors);
    } else {
        logon();
    }
} else {
   show_form();
}

The content of the page (function show_form)

    <?php
    if( isset($_COOKIE['logedon'])){
        echo '<p>You are now logged on</p>';
        }
    else{
          //shows form containing: <input type="hidden" name="reg" value="1"/>
    }
?>

and finally the logon() function

function logon(){
$expire= 60 * 60 * 24 * 10000 + time(); 
setcookie('logedon', true, $expire); 
show_form();
}

So the cookie is set, the show_form function is called but still shows the form instead of the echo ‘you are now logged on’. When I switch page or hit the submit button again, the echo is displayed. Why doesnt it do that the first time?

Please help!

Answer 1

The setcookie docs say:

Cookies will not become visible until
the next loading of a page that the
cookie should be visible for. To test
if a cookie was successfully set,
check for the cookie on a next loading
page before the cookie expires. Expire
time is set via the expire parameter.
A nice way to debug the existence of
cookies is by simply calling
print_r($_COOKIE);.

After setting the cookie you should reload your page, you can use header('location:http://someurl');die();