Get cookie expiry time

[mymatebob]

Hi,

I am using cookies to keep track if a user is logged into my system,
and would like to display the time that the user has left logged in.
One solution is to display the time left until the cookie expires.

Does anyone know how to retrieve the expiry time of a particular
cookie?

TIA

Jeff

[mymatebob]

If the above is not possible, then I suppose one solution is to store
the expiry time in an additional cookie.

[Andy Jeffries]

On Tue, 02 May 2006 03:05:15 -0700, mymatebob wrote:

If the above is not possible, then I suppose one solution is to store the
expiry time in an additional cookie.

Or re-set the cookie for a known expiry time on every page view (say ten
minutes and 20 seconds) then countdown in Javascript for ten minutes (the
extra 20 seconds is grace period and to allow for the page to
download/Javascript to start).

Cheers,
Andy

--
Andy Jeffries MBCS CITP ZCE | gPHPEdit Lead Developer
http://www.gphpedit.org | PHP editor for Gnome 2
http://www.andyjeffries.co.uk | Personal site and photos

[mymatebob]

Sounds a bit overly complicated! But an interesting solution.

It seems strange that there's no method in PHP for obtaining the cookie
expiry time. Ah well. In the mean time I have stuck with the "storing
expiry time in another cookie" method. Suppose I could add a Java
Script function to check the values every second to produce a real time
"time left until log out" counter.

Many thanks for the response!

Jeff

[Andy Jeffries]

On Wed, 03 May 2006 02:32:36 -0700, my*******@googlemail.com wrote:

Sounds a bit overly complicated! But an interesting solution.
Not that complex though, it's only a matter of iterating through $_COOKIE
and resetting each one with a known expiry time (strtotime("+10 minutes
and 20 seconds")). You could do this in a single file and automatically
use it on every page using php_value auto_prepend_file in the Apache
virtualhost.
It seems strange that there's no method in PHP for obtaining the cookie
expiry time.
It's not really strange, if you examine the HTTP spec (or watch HTTP
headers using Firefox's Live HTTP Headers) you'll find the browser doesn't
send back the expiry date to the server, only the name and value.
Therefore it's not strange that PHP can't obtain the information, it's
never told (and it can't just remember what it set because it could have
been changed with Javascript or by editing the cookies.txt file).
Ah well. In the mean time I have stuck with the "storing
expiry time in another cookie" method. Suppose I could add a Java Script
function to check the values every second to produce a real time "time
left until log out" counter.

Many thanks for the response!

You're welcome.

Cheers,
Andy

--
Andy Jeffries MBCS CITP ZCE | gPHPEdit Lead Developer
http://www.gphpedit.org | PHP editor for Gnome 2
http://www.andyjeffries.co.uk | Personal site and photos

[mymatebob]

Ah! That IS a good solution. I was thinking of setting a default expiry
of 4 hours, but with your solution, the cookies keep in date as long as
the user is actively using the website - much more user friendly.

Thanks for explaining the missing functions I was looking for in PHP. I
saw the cookie expiry date in the "View Cookies" Firefox extension and
just assumed the value would be readily available somehow.

Cheers

Jeff

[Andy Jeffries]

On Thu, 04 May 2006 00:12:32 -0700, my*******@googlemail.com wrote:

Ah! That IS a good solution. I was thinking of setting a default expiry of
4 hours, but with your solution, the cookies keep in date as long as the
user is actively using the website - much more user friendly.

Thanks for explaining the missing functions I was looking for in PHP. I
saw the cookie expiry date in the "View Cookies" Firefox extension and
just assumed the value would be readily available somehow.

You're more than welcome mate, best of luck with your project.

Cheers,
Andy
--
Andy Jeffries MBCS CITP ZCE | gPHPEdit Lead Developer
http://www.gphpedit.org | PHP editor for Gnome 2
http://www.andyjeffries.co.uk | Personal site and photos