Search code examples
phpwordpresssetcookie

Issues with setcookie on wordpress site

At first I had my setcookie() as:

$school = "Some Value";
setcookie("default_school", $school, time()+3600);
var_dump($_COOKIE);

That didn't work, so I did some searching, and found that I probably just needed to set a path, so I changed it to:

$school = "Some Value";
setcookie("default_school", $school, time()+3600, "/", ".mydomain.com");
var_dump($_COOKIE);

That still didn't work so I did some more investigating, and determined that my issue must just me setting the cookie too late. So I then started checking my if my headers were set in certain parts of my code, which needs to return bool(false).

var_dump(headers_sent());

First the top of my index.php, then at the top of my header.php, but still the same result; they both return true?

I feel like this should be so simple, and I'm getting nowhere. A push in the right direction would be highly appreciated.

Thanks, Isaac

EDIT: Just tried putting it before the init hook, and it returned false. I then put the setcookie function there, and still no luck.

EDIT 2: Ended up adding:

function set_user_cookie() {
    $school = "Some Value";
    setcookie('default_school', $school, time()+3600);
}

add_action('init', 'set_user_cookie');

and now it works perfectly.

Solution

  • To debug this kind of situation, you should start with enabling proper error reporting (don't use in a production environment):

    error_reporting(-1);
ini_set('display_errors', 'On');

    If you subsequently call setcookie() it will issue a warning that will tell you where the output has started.

    If you can't do that, you can use headers_sent() in this manner to figure out where the output has started as well:

    if (headers_sent($file, $line)) {
    echo "Output started in $file on line $line\n";
}