Question

My script is fairly simple. When someone tries to login, PHP checks the form data against a MySQL database, set’s a cookie for the session, and refreshes the page. Now, I’ve pinpointed the cookie script to be causing chaos and completely stopping the thing from working. However, I don’t know why. The code I am using is this:

<?php
header('Content-type: text/javascript');
$erroron="false";
$id='false';

$con = mysql_connect("localhost","***","***");
if (!$con)
  {
  die('$("#connecterror").stop().hide().fadeIn(); ');
  }

mysql_select_db("***", $con);

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
  {

  if( $row['username']==$_POST["user"]&&$row['password']==$_POST["pass"])
{
if($row['confirmed']==1){
$id=$row['id'];
}
else{
echo '$("#erroractivate").stop(false,true).hide().fadeIn(200);';
}
 }
else if( $row['email']==$_POST["user"]&&$row['password']==$_POST["pass"])
{
if($row['confirmed']==1){
$id=$row['id'];
}
else{
echo '$("#erroractivate").stop(false,true).hide().fadeIn(200);';
}
 }
else{
if($erroron=="false"){
$erroron="true";
 echo '$("#error").stop(false,true).hide().fadeIn(200);';
}
}
  }
if($id=='false'){
 echo '$("#error").stop(false,true).hide().fadeIn(200);';
}
else{
echo '$("#page").text("You have logged in, redirecting...");$("body").css("cursor","wait");setTimeout("location.reload(true);",2000);';
setcookie("sessionid", $id,0,'/','profile.campatet.com',false,true);
}

mysql_close($con);

?>

Now, this the the part that is not working:

setcookie("sessionid", $id,0,'/','profile.campatet.com',false,true);

If I take that off, the script successfully refreshes the page, but because there is no cookie set, you can’t login. If I keep it on, it simply does nothing.

Answer 1

PHP’s setcookie does it’s thing via the headers, and unless you use output buffering, echoing before attempting setcookie will send the headers prematurely and prevent the cookie from being set.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php

http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.outcontrol.php