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PHP Browser Persistent Data with PHP Data Persistence on the Web Cookies

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,252 Points
Posted by Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,252 Points

Can I just ask about parameters of setcookie

I was able to pass the code challenge.

However I was left a little confused. I need to know if the order of parameters makes a technical differents to a cookie in practice.

The code challenge asks us for the parameters and to pass it I had to give the path as the 4th parameter after the timestamp. I guess it's this order because that's the order the challenge asks for it but does it make a real difference?

<?php
//add cookie below this line
setcookie("cookiename", "value",  "timestamp", "path");

or 

<?php
//add cookie below this line
setcookie("cookiename", "value",  "path", "timestamp");

1 Answer

Corey Cramer
Corey Cramer
9,453 Points

It actually does matter. If you swap the path and the expiration you're going to get some amount of weirdness. Your cookie will be set to expire on '/' and be for directory '2018-01-20 10:14' for example.

Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,252 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,252 Points

So there is an order to it that I'm going to have to learn. Thanks. :-)

Corey Cramer
Corey Cramer
9,453 Points

Yes sir. setcookie('name', 'value you want later', 'expiration date', 'path such as /dashboard/', 'domain such as www.teamtreehouse.com', 'TRUE/FALSE for whether it only works over https', 'TRUE/FALSE for HTTP protocol only so will not work for scripting languages such as JavaScript').

So to set a cookie for the Treehouse forums it would go something like:

<?php
setcookie('cookie', 'will need this later', '2018-01-20 10:14', '/community/', 'www.teamtreehouse.com', TRUE, TRUE)
?>

EDIT: For the expiration date the easiest way to programmatically set the date is to use the time() or mktime() function. time()+60*60*24*30 is good for 30 days (seconds, minutes, hours, days respectively).