Why are my cookies not setting?

user_882417 0
Viewed 86225

I have the following PHP function:

function validateUser($username){
    session_regenerate_id (); 
    $_SESSION['valid'] = 1;
    $_SESSION['username'] = $username;
    setcookie('username2',$username,time()+60*60*24*365);
    header("Location: ../new.php");
}

And then I fetch the cookie:

echo $_COOKIE['username2']; exit();

(I only put exit() for debugging purposes)

Only problem, it's coming out blank. Any ideas?

UPDATE: This is how the function is called:

    if(mysql_num_rows($queryreg) != 0){
    $row = mysql_fetch_array($queryreg,MYSQL_ASSOC);
    $hash = hash('sha256', $row['salt'] . hash('sha256', $password));
    if($hash == $row['password']) {
        if($row['confirm'] == 1){
            if(isset($remember)){
                setcookie('username',$username,time()+60*60*24*365);
                setcookie('password',$password,time()+60*60*24*365);
            } else {
                setcookie('username','',time()-3600);
                setcookie('password','',time()-3600);
            }
            validateUser($username);

I didn't include all the if() statements to save some space.

cookies php
9 Answers

This requires that you place calls to this function prior to any output, including and tags as well as any whitespace.

this is how the structure looks

<?php
$cookie_name = "user";
$cookie_value = "Ahmed Moftah";
setcookie($cookie_name, $cookie_value, time() + (86400 * 30), "/"); // 86400 = 1 day
?>
<?php
if(!isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name])) {
    echo "Cookie named '" . $cookie_name . "' is not set!";
} else {
    echo "Cookie '" . $cookie_name . "' is set!<br>";
    echo "Value is: " . $_COOKIE[$cookie_name];
}
?>
<html>
<body>



</body>
</html>
user_46270750

It might be a cache problem. Try closing the browser and opening a new one with the localhost file path. I had the same issue and my page was cached so the cookies weren't working, even though I could put in new code and see a change on the page. Very weird... Cleaning your cache might help, try that first. Then try a new browser, then try to go to your localhost:8080 index and hit refresh to see when the last page was modified.

If that doesn't fix it, try restarting LAAMP or XAAMP or whatever you are using.

user_92775730

This happens with the session cookies are disabled.

You can navigate to your php.ini file(changes depending on server. Ubuntu 20.04's default is /etc/php/{X.x}/{apache2|[others]}/php.ini) and ensure that session.use_cookies=1

Restart your server and then try to set the cookie. They should immediately be available.

user_80331720

You probably have sent header hereby making it impossible to set header for cookie. It might be a simple solution of ob_start() at the start of your page.

user_83323040

[Solution tested in XAMPP for PHP 8.0.19] I modified the file php.ini and set session.auto_start=1. Keep in mind that i'm calling session_set_cookie_params([param => value]) just before session_start() every time this functions appears in my code, in every file.

session.auto_star: Initialize session on request startup.

http://php.net/session.auto-start

Still studying and analysing the reason and functionality of this, it was kind of a serendipity. Probably not the most secure solution.

user_167169960
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