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General Discussion HTTP: Do You GET It?

Posted by Ashish Pai
Ashish Pai
4,976 Points

Who sets the cookie?

Lets say:

  1. I open a website "Google.com". My browser will send a HTTP request to the server(google)
  2. Google will reply with a HTML page in its HTTP response.

From what I understand , a cookie is used by the server to maintain the state of the user. So, how and when is the cookie set? Im confused.

1 Answer

Luke Pettway
Luke Pettway
16,593 Points
Luke Pettway
Luke Pettway
16,593 Points

The cookie is set within the code based on certain criteria (signed up for a mailing list, first visit, login, etc). For example on a php site you could do:

<?php
$value = 'something from somewhere';

setcookie("TestCookie", $value);
setcookie("TestCookie", $value, time()+3600);  /* expire in 1 hour */
setcookie("TestCookie", $value, time()+3600, "/~rasmus/", "example.com", 1);
?>

And do this on page load so that any user would immediately have a cookie created. You can also use javascript to do the same thing. If a user visited a page, and got a pop-up for a mailing list, it would typically be set to create a cookie if the pop-up is closed so that they won't get it on the next visit.