Question

i have a strange problem, when i use setcookie in PHP with session, while my browser is open, everything work fine, but when I close it, then I can’t pass $_SESSION from page to another page!
in login page I have:

$_SESSION['name'] = $_POST['name'];
$_SESSION['pass'] = $_POST['pass'];
$life=2592000;//1 month
setcookie(session_name(),session_id(),time()+$life);
header("location:administrator/");
die();

I used session_start(); in every page on top of them, also I used this code for logout:

session_start();
unset($_SESSION['name']);
unset($_SESSION['pass']);
session_destroy();
header("location:../");

an important note is when I checked browser cookies, before closing browser there are tow cookie and their contents value is exactly same like each other, one expire at the end of session but another expire one month latter, which I like to be, but then I close browser and return back, there are tow cookie but with different values! which I think case problem and session variables don’t pass from page to page.

Answer 1

Apart from the problem mentioned by @Matt (you may need some custom mechanism to restore or reinstantinate session using cookies), keep in mind that using mod_rewrite or actual directories messes with cookies path! To make sure the cookie is available when and where you need it, add additional parameter / (PHP setcookie(), $path parameter)