Question

I have set my cookie in PHP using the following:

setcookie("id", 100, time()+100000, "/AP", "www.mydomain.com", 0, true);

When I look at the cookies stored in the browser it looks like this:

Name:    id
Content: 100
Domain:  .www.mydomain.com
Path:    /AP

Notice the . in the Domain

When I set a cookie in javascript I get the same results except:

Name:    id
Content: 100
Domain:  www.mydomain.com
Path:    /AP

The domain is different. Why does my PHP cookie put a ‘.’ in front of http://www.mydomain.com and javascript does not.

The following is the javascript code that I’m using to create a cookie:

            function SetCookie(cookieName,cookieValue,nDays) {
             var today = new Date();
             var expire = new Date();
             if (nDays==null || nDays==0) nDays=1;
             expire.setTime(today.getTime() + 3600000*24*nDays);
             document.cookie = cookieName+"="+escape(cookieValue)
                             + ";expires="+expire.toGMTString();
        }

Any ideas?

Update:

When I try to read this using the following function in javascript:

            function ReadCookie(cookieName) {
             var theCookie=""+document.cookie;
             var ind=theCookie.indexOf(cookieName);
             if (ind==-1 || cookieName=="") return "";
             var ind1=theCookie.indexOf(';',ind);
             if (ind1==-1) ind1=theCookie.length;
             return unescape(theCookie.substring(ind+cookieName.length+1,ind1));
        }

I can’t get the value using the ReadCookie function (above) from the cookie that contains:

Domain: .www.mydomain.com

However the cookie that contains:

Domain: www.mydomain.com 

works just fine.

Answer 1

So someone with the same problem can easily find the answer in the future. Here’s my comment in answer form:

You’re settings the cookie to httponly, meaning javascript cannot interact with it. Remove the last parameter of setcookie or set it to false and you should be able to access it using javascript.

setcookie("id", 100, time()+100000, "/AP", "www.mydomain.com", false, false);

Glad I could help!