php session cookie not stored

Question

I have this php script in my header.php file, sending HTTP headers to a python script, and setting a GUID as a session cookie:

 <?php
  ob_start();
  function guid(){
    if (function_exists('com_create_guid')){
        return com_create_guid();
    }else{
        mt_srand((double)microtime()*10000);//optional for php 4.2.0 and up.
        $charid = strtoupper(md5(uniqid(rand(), true)));
        $hyphen = chr(45);// "-"
        $uuid = chr(123)// "{"
                .substr($charid, 0, 8).$hyphen
                .substr($charid, 8, 4).$hyphen
                .substr($charid,12, 4).$hyphen
                .substr($charid,16, 4).$hyphen
                .substr($charid,20,12)
                .chr(125);// "}"
        return $uuid;
    }
  }
  $UA = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
  $REF = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  $IP =   $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
  $GUID = guid();
  $actual_link = "http://$_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]$_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]";
  if (!isset($_COOKIE["name"]))
    setcookie('name',$GUID);
  //echo $UA;
  //echo $REF;
  //echo $IP;
  //echo $GUID;
  echo exec("python /var/www/html/oscommerce-2.3.3.4/header_sender.py -u '$UA' -r '$REF' -i '$IP' -c '$GUID' -p '$actual_link' 2>&1");
  ob_end_flush();
  ?>

The problem I'm seeing is that this generates a new GUID for every page load in the same session - the session cookie seems to be not stored.

What could the problem be? Thanks

Answer 1

Seems like you don't declare session_start();

EDIT :

Since you're not using $_SESSION[" "] but instead $_COOKIE[" "].

It seems like you don't define how long the cookie will be stored on your browser by time() + x seconds

setcookie('name',$value,time()+..);