PHP + ie6 + cookies: failing a hello world world for cookies

Question

I tried, to no avail! My problem is php's setcookie() fails in IE6. It's fully functioning (albeit buggy) for Firefox 3 and IE7/8. The following is the code. IE6 displays fail. Simple question: why?

<?
    header('P3P: CP="DEV PSAi NAV STP DEM OTRo NOI IDC 
                     DSP COR CURa ADMa OUR IND PHY ONL COM STA"'); 

    setcookie('hello', 'poopoo');

    echo $_COOKIE['hello'];
?>

I suspected P3P (link), or maybe some bug with the timezone-- IE6 javascript not converting time to the same standard that php uses (so that all server-issued cookies are automatically expired).

Here's what I've done: For the p3p issue, I inserted the above header tag. I've also created a policy file, and a policy reference, and run the my site through w3c's p3p checker with no errors.

For the timezone issues, I reset the time zone in browscap.ini. I also tweaked my clock forward, and backward by 24 hours.

If you can give me any new things to try, it would be very much appreciated. All I need is a Hello World cookie setter for IE6.

I appreciate it.

*Update: I caught wind that the standalone IE6 has issues that match this. Can anyone with IE6 do a quick check that you can add items to the cart on my alpha?

Answer 1

Final Update: Bug caused by standalone ie6 run on vista. Dl'ed official msft virtual pc and virtual hd and the site worked perfect.

Answer 2

What are the security settings for IE?

Could it be that the security settings on it don't allow you to write cookies for it?

Answer 3

The $_COOKIE array is filled during your script initialisation. It is not changed by setcookie : the value will have changed at next page loading.

See the php manual for the setcookie function :

Once the cookies have been set, they can be accessed on the next page load with the $_COOKIE or $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS arrays.