Question

In Internet Explorer, for example, you can enable first party cookies, third party cookies and allow session cookies.

I know the difference between:

• a first party cookie and a third party cookie, and
• a PHP session and a cookie.

But what is a session cookie? And how can you set one using PHP?

For example, you cannot log into Facebook without cookies enabled. However, if you allow session cookies, you can log into Facebook.

So, how does a session cookie differ from other kinds of cookies?

Answer 1

A cookie has a lifetime, after which it will expire (As denoted by the Expires directive). If you don’t set a timeout, the browser will expire the cookie when you close the browser. This is called a session cookie.

These kind of cookies are often used to track a users current session state on the server side (E.g. php’s sessions), but there is not a strong relation between the two uses of the word “session”