cookie question

-> the "time" parameter is an *absolute* value, and starts counting from the moment you set the cookie.

As a result, if you use time()+5 you get the amount of seconds since 1970 (about 1 billion seconds) + 5 sec, so you set your cookie to expire in rougly 32 years.

php manual :

time()
- Return current UNIX timestamp
- usage:int time (void)

Returns the current time measured in the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT).

In short, use
setcookie('bob','hello',5);

Good luck
jpoesnen

I can't even write my own name :(

jpoesen

???

Are you going to award points?

sure hope so :)

jpoesen, I don't think you are correct.

From the PHP manual ...

Some examples follow how to send cookies: Example 1. setcookie() send examples

setcookie ("TestCookie", $value);
setcookie ("TestCookie", $value,time()+3600);  /* expire in 1 hour */
setcookie ("TestCookie", $value,time()+3600, "/~rasmus/", ".utoronto.ca", 1);
 
 
The setcookie parameters are ...

setcookie ( string name [, string value [, int expire [, string path [, string domain [, int secure]]]]])

The expire parameter requires a proper time (i.e. time()).

So, there is no reason that

setcookie('bob','hello',time()+5);

will not create a cookie that will expire in 5 seconds.


Steven,

Once you've set the cookie with an automatic timeout, what are you doing to determine that the cookie has NOT expired as expected?

Richard.

Quite right. I used on old version of my message board to check. It was a version where I already started using session vars instead.

My mistake.

setcookie('bob','hello',time()+5);

makes a cookie that expires. But I don't think that "expires" means that the cookie is deleted, just that it is no longer valid.

Thanks for noticing, RQuadling.

jpoesen.

I thought that if I tried to reference

I tried what jpoesen said but 'bob' , once it had timed out I'd get '' instead of 'hello'.

I tried what jpoesen said but its still there.

what I did was saved time() to bob and then when I checked it, I compared bob to time() to see how long since it had been accessed, since it doesn't seem to disappear.

Thanks everyone for your help.

I meant.

I tried what jpoesen said but 'bob' , once it had timed out I thought I'd get '' instead of 'hello'.