Search⌘ K
AI Features
Home
Courses
PHP for the Web: Learn PHP without a Framework

Using a Cookie

Explore how to use cookies in PHP to personalize web pages by storing and accessing user data. Understand how to handle undefined cookies to prevent errors, and learn about cookie settings that affect security and functionality. This lesson equips you with practical skills to manage cookies effectively for dynamic PHP applications.

We'll cover the following...

Array of key-value pairs

The PHP server has a built-in mechanism that takes the Cookie header from the request, processes its contents, and produces a nice array of key/value pairs. The array is a superglobal variable, just like ＄_GET and ＄_POST. This one is called ＄_COOKIE.

Let’s use the name cookie in random.php to personalize the page a bit:

PHP
<h1>Your lucky number is: <?php echo $randomInt; ?></h1>
<?php if ($randomInt > 5) { ?>
    <h2>Nice, <?php
        echo htmlspecialchars($_COOKIE['name'], ENT_QUOTES);
    ?>!</h2>
<?php } ?>

Reload the page a few times until it shows a random number higher than 5, after which you should see your name on the screen.

Let’s see how it works ...