php setcookie not working with ajax call

php javascript ajax cookies xmlhttprequest

23,327

Solution 1

If you don't add a $path value to setcookie(), it defaults to "the current directory". This means that if you set the cookie from /web/DEV/Classes/SetCookie.php, the cookie gets set to /web/DEV/Classes/, and anything above that path won't see that cookie.

To fix this, add a specific $path to setcookie. If your app runs on the domain root (example.com), use '/'. If it's in a subfolder (example.com/myapp/), use '/myapp/'

setcookie("TestCookie", $var, time()+60*60*24*30, '/');

Solution 2

I think you should look into the path parameter of the setcookie. Set it to "/" , so that it is accessible from across all directories/pages of the site.

23,327

Author by

adam

I am a Software Engineer with 11 years of professional experience. I work with ASP.NET, C# & VB.NET, JS/JQuery and SQL on a daily basis. I am on stackoverflow to grow and learn as a professional developer give back to the community in my free time

Updated on October 19, 2020

Comments

adam over 3 years

I have a page, test.php, with the following code:

<html>
    <body>
        <form>
            <script type="text/javascript"> 

                function SendCookies(){

                    if (window.XMLHttpRequest)/* code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari */
                    { xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); }
                    else /* code for IE6, IE5 */
                    { xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); }

                    xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
                    {
                        if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status == 200)
                        {
                            alert('done');
                        }
                    }

                    xmlhttp.open("GET", "/web/DEV/Classes/SetCookie.php?time=" + new Date());
                    xmlhttp.send();

                }

            </script>

            <input type="text" id="txtInput" name="txtInput"/>
            <input type="button" id="btnSubmit" name="btnSubmit" value="Submit"  onclick="SendCookies()"/>
            <div id="divTest">
                <?php
                    if (isset($_COOKIE["TestCookie"])) {
                        echo $_COOKIE["TestCookie"];
                    } else {
                        echo "__Results__";
                    }
                ?>          
            </div>
        </form>
    </body>
</html>

I have a page, SetCookie.php, with the following code:

<?php 
    $var = "THIS IS  A  TEST";
    setcookie("TestCookie", $var, time()+60*60*24*30);
?>

When test.php's button is clicked, i use XMLHttpRequest to call my SetCookie.php page. The page executes, becuase if i add an echo to it, i get that in the xmlhttp response. However, TestCookie does not seem to be getting set.

If in text.php, i do the same command found in SetCookie.php, the cookie is then set accordingly for all browser sessions.

Even after i close / open the browser, the cookie remains unchanged from when i once set it in my test.php page manually.

----EDIT-----

I added:

if(!setcookie("TestCookie", "A", time()+60*60*24*30, "/")) {
    echo "FAIL";
}

to the very top of test.php, however when i reload the page, it never shows the updated cookie... because that cookie was already set without the ,"/" parameter, and cannot be modified later, with the ,"/" parameter.

After clearing the cache and working with the suggested code, i cleared my cookies from the browser and used the added parameter for the set method, i was able to manipulate the cookies from all pages!!! thank you so much!!

adam over 10 years

Note, this will not change an already existing cookie. The old cookie must be cleared out first, if it did not have a path specified.