Question

This is taken directly from w3’s website. I may not be understanding cookies correctly, but why is nothing displaying?

$expire=time()+60*60*24*30;
setcookie("user", "Alex Porter", $expire);
echo $_COOKIE["user"]; 

Answer 1

Your cookie will only be accessible when you refresh the page or navigate to a new one.

When your script loads, the HTML header fields for that page have already been set. The page will need to be rendered again (another HTTP transaction) before your cookie is available for use. Check PHP’s documentation:

Once the cookies have been set, they can be accessed on the next page load with the $_COOKIE or $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS arrays.