How can I set a cookie and then redirect in PHP?

Question

After doing a bit of processing, I want to set a cookie value to user input and then redirect them to a new page. However, the cookie is not getting set. If I comment out the redirect, then the cookie is set successfully. I assume this is a header issue of some sort. What is the best workaround for this situation?

if($form_submitted) {
    ...
    setcookie('type_id', $new_type_id, time() + 60*60*24*30);
    header("Location: $url");
    exit;
}

Note that setcookie returns true in either case and I get no errors/warnings/notices.

EDIT: I am using Unix/Apache/MySQL/PHP

Answer 1

If you have human urls or subfolders (like www.domain.com/path1/path2/), then you must set cookie path to / to work for all paths, not just current one.

if($form_submitted) {
    ...
    setcookie('type_id', $new_type_id, time() + 60*60*24*30, '/');
    header("Location: $url");
    exit;
}

From PHP manual:

The path on the server in which the cookie will be available on. If set to '/', the cookie will be available within the entire domain . If set to '/foo/', the cookie will only be available within the /foo/ directory and all sub-directories such as /foo/bar/ of domain . The default value is the current directory that the cookie is being set in.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you are running IIS? There is a know bug with IIS versions less than 7 when attempting to both set a cookie and a location header in the same request.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q176113/

Answer 3

How are you testing if the cookie is set? Cookies are available on the next page after they are set.

Common Pitfalls:

Cookies will not become visible until the next loading of a page that the cookie should be visible for. To test if a cookie was successfully set, check for the cookie on a next loading page before the cookie expires. Expire time is set via the expire parameter. A nice way to debug the existence of cookies is by simply calling print_r($_COOKIE);.

Answer 4

I was able to solve this problem by using a slight delay in the refresh header. We set the header (which must be done before any methods which might output, like setcookie), and then set the cookies. I added a message so that the user doesn't see a blank screen for those couple seconds.

    header("refresh: 2; url=$url");
    setcookie('type_id', $new_type_id, time() + 60*60*24*30, '/');
    echo "Processing, please wait...";

Answer 5

Use a relative URL in the header:

@Header("Location: orders_9090_1.php");