PHP transparently supports HTTP cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for storing data in the
remote browser and thus tracking or identifying return users. You can set cookies using the setcookie() function. Cookies are part of the HTTP
header, so setcookie() must be called before any
output is sent to the browser. This is the same limitation that
header() has. You can use the output buffering functions
to delay the script output until you have decided whether or not to set any cookies or send any
headers.
Any cookies sent to you from the client will automatically be turned into a PHP variable
just like GET and POST method data, depending on the register_globals and
variables_order configuration variables. If you wish to assign multiple values to a single
cookie, just add [] to the cookie name.
In PHP 4.1.0 and later, the $_COOKIE auto-global array will always be set
with any cookies sent from the client. $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS is also set in earlier versions
of PHP when the track_vars configuration variable is set.
For more details, including notes on browser bugs, see the setcookie() function.
|
