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I like to use PHP to see if a cookie PHPSID27258STATUS is present with the value COMPLETE en if so do stuff.

In google chrome (in Options) I can see this cookie is present and has the value COMPLETE.

If I run this PHP script I get 'Not Set'. What am I doing wrong here?

$cookiename="PHPSID27258STATUS"; if (isset($_COOKIE[$cookiename]) && $_COOKIE[$cookiename] == "COMPLETE")

--update
The cookie is set by "limesurvey" an open source survey platform. Although its probably not the best way. I use limesurvey to have a small survey (iframe) on an site i'm building. I like to let the survey disappear on the next visit when it has bin posted. Limesurvey runs from the same host (localhost now). And is in a sub directory of the site.

I guess (but there's a lot of code in LS) this is how the cookie is made after an poll/post is completed.

$cookiename="PHPSID".returnglobal('sid')."STATUS"; setcookie("$cookiename", "COMPLETE", time() + 31536000); //Cookie will expire in 365 days
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    What do you see when you print_r($_COOKIE)? How are you setting the cookie? Is the cookie set for the same domain that you're accessing the script? Please show us the setcookie() code too Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 12:31

4 Answers 4

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You can only read cookies which belong to the same domain as the reading script. For instance if the cookie PHPSID27258STATUS was set by domain xyz.com, you can not read it using a script on abc.com. So make sure the domain of your desired cookie is the same. Also show us the code part where you are setting your cookie.

Edit:

setcookie($cookiename, "COMPLETE", (time() + 31536000) , '/');
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4 Comments

The cookie is set by "limesurvey" i'll update the original post.
@Rob in that case you can not read the cookie from a domain other than limesurvey
The domain i run the script from is the same (localhost) only the path of limesurvey is different(sub-dir from the site). Is in that case it still not possible to read the cookie?
@Rob i updated the answer above, try setting the cookie with the directory parameter, i think it would help.
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Try setting the cookie with this code:

setcookie("cookiename", "cookievalue", time() + 31536000, "/");

This makes the cookie available to the whole domain, I recently encountered the same issue and when I tried this, it made it work, the reason is, your browser stores cookies for both domain.com and www.domain.com so you never know which your setting and getting from, it's good practice to set the domain even if you don't have this problem.

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You cannot access a cookie immediately after you set it. At least last time it was like that. Make sure you do not have this issue. If it is not may be you have a problem setting the cookie, and in that case please post that part as well.

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You just need to mention when you can access a cookie: in the next request (after you have set it).
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You mention that the cookie is set by a program running in its own sub-directory. You don't mention whether the cookie itself is set to be in that sub-directory, but I suspect this is where your problem is.

If a cookie is set to a path, then it will only be accessible to pages within that path. This behaviour is described in the PHP setcookie() manual page.

When you're setting cookies from a page within a sub-directory, then in order for the cookie to be accessible to the whole site, setcookie() needs to be called with the optional path parameter set to "/".

You state that the cookie is being set by LimeSurvey. I don't know this software, but you should be able to look at the source and see whether it's using the path parameter when it sets the cookie. If not, your best option would be to modify it so that it does. Then the cookie will be accessible to the whole site. (It would be quite understandable if the LineSurvey developers had chosen not to set it for the whole site, because it would allow the software to be run as a more isolated entity from anything else on the site).

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