(localhost) cookie weirdness

[Donny Bahama]

I do my development and testing in a Xampp environment, running all the code on the localhost. But for some reason, I seem to be unable to set cookies in that environment. When I look at cookies for 127.0.0.1, there are cookies there (that were set by other pages that I didn't write), so (I think) I know they can be set... I don't know what I'm doing wrong!

Here's a simple cookietest page I did...

PHP: Select all

<?php
if (isset($_POST['initials']) && isset($_POST['zipcode'])) {
    setcookie('initials', $_POST['initials'], time()+(180*24*3600));
    setcookie('zipcode', $_POST['zipcode'], time()+(180*24*3600));
    $redirect="cookietest2.php";
    header("Location: $redirect");
} else {
    echo "
<form action='{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}' method='POST'>
<p>Please type your initials: <input type='text' name='initials' /></p>
<p>Please enter your zipcode? <input type='text' name='zipcode' /></p>
<p><input type='submit' /></p>
</form>
";
}
?>

And here's the page it redirects to.

PHP: Select all

<?php
if (isset($_COOKIE['initials'])) {
    echo "You've got cookies!<br />The initials cookie 
             is set to ".$_COOKIE['initials']."<br />";
} else {
    echo "Your browser did not accept the initials cookie.<br />";
}
if (isset($_COOKIE['zipcode'])) {
    echo "You've got cookies!<br />The zipcode cookie 
             is set to ".$_COOKIE['zipcode']."<br />";
} else {
    echo "Your browser did not accept the zipcode cookie.<br />";
}
?>

This fails to set cookies and returns the "Your browser did not accept" messages.

I can create cookies in a text file and import them (using CookieSafe) and then I can read them (not sure if I can write/update them) but if I need to set a cookie dynamically (e.g. the session ID), I can't do it.

Update - I just tested and I can NOT update cookies set by importing via CookieSafe. That makes these cookies pretty useless.

[spinal007]

I'm sorry mate, I can't help you on this one.
But I can tell you that either:
a) You logic is wrong, you're not actually setting the cookies.
b) The security settings on your browser don't allow cookies (unlikely)

[Donny Bahama]

No. I'm not setting cookies. I know that. (And that's the problem.) The same page, posted to a (remote) web server sets cookies just fine.

Thanks for looking in, Diego.

[masonbarge]

Can't tell you what's wrong but the first thing I'd do is try echoing the POST variables right after the php tag to make sure they're okay and see if it's doing anything weird to the values.

Second thing I'd try is setting the POST variable values to a simple variable then play with quotes around them inside the cookie parameters.

Might also take out or simplify the time variable until the first two parameters succeed in setting a cookie.

[Donny Bahama]

Good suggestions, all, Mason. Thanks. I'll give that a try.