Question

Is it possible to run both session and cookie helpers? Cause I am trying and I can’t get a cookie to set for the life of me, no matter what method I try either falling CI’s docs to the letter and doing it there way or attempting to work with cookies through native php alone. Either way I try cookies will not set.

I have tried to set them like:

$this->input-set_cookie('AutoRemember', $mID.'-'.$hashbrown, $shortlife);
and
setcookie('AutoRemember', $mID.'-'.$hashbrown, $shortlife);

and I have tried to work with them like

echo $this->input->cookie('AutoRemember');
and
echo $_COOKIE['AutoRemember'];

the cookie helper is auto loaded just as is the session one, so they are loaded. session helper works like a charm, but the cookies I got nothing but a headache. All I want to do is set a cookie so I can have a “remember me” function on my site, and what should be a 5 minute deal to do, has taken me hours of various ways of passing it either by setting something for a view to pick up so it can set it in a view, or setting it in the controller and nothing.

Doesn’t appear to be a browser issue either as both Chrome, and FireFox seem to not have a cookie getting stored anywhere.

So is it something with using both sessions and cookies or is codeigniter garbage when it comes to setting a cookie and kills the effort no matter which way you try.

Answer 1

Looking through some of the Expression Engine code (an app shipped by Ellis Labs that uses CI) they are calling the PHP native setcookie function in their set_cookie function, so perhaps this is the way to go.

Looks like there should be no problem having the cookie helper running in tandem with the Session library. That said it’s worth noting the Session class is calling setcookie directly rather than using the cookie helper (way to reuse code CI!).

In general, calling the PHP function setcookie should bypass any CI stuff and work no matter what, so if that isn’t working maybe something else is going on. Best bet is probably to start with setcookie and try to get that working.

Check the return value from setcookie, if it’s false output has already been started and that’s why it isn’t working; could be the same issue you’re running into trying the CI cookie helper too.