php's "setcookie" doesn't work cross-browser?

At the moment I'm using setcookie to set my cookies, however it only works in Fi开发者_Go百科refox and Safari, and cookies are not set in IE and Chrome (and maybe other browsers).

setcookie($name, $value, time()+3600 * 25);

I read in an article about setcookie and IE, that if the expiry date is in the past (or is too small), IE simply ignores it.

I know Javascript can set cookies (I'm using MooTools) but I'd prefer using php and MooTools & cookies isn't working for me.

Any help would be appreciated.

Check your server's clock. If it's running more than 25 hours behind, the time() + 3600 * 25 could still be in the past as far as the browser is concerned.

PHP can definitely set cookies cross browser - after all, it is just a header, and you don't see sessions failing in IE and Chrome on PHP sites do you?

I can understand why IE wouldn't honour a cookie with a past expiry date.

Have you examined the headers in those browsers?

setcookie doesn't depend on browser, the cookies are set using HTTP protocol headers, which is definitely cross-browser

The reason of setcookie fail may be:

• sending fome portion of text before setcookie executes. Turn error messages on using error_reporting(E_ALL); to see the line where the output started. The cookies must be sent before the first line of HTML or the first echo executes.
• saving php files in UTF-8 encoding with BOM. BOM can be turned off. Open the file in a text editor, change encodind and re-save it. Create a backup first
• using setcookie with time which has been passed. The third parameter of setcookie is expiration time. Is less then time(), the cookies won't be saved
• specifying wrong parameters to setcookie. Check your cookie_name parameter for containing alphanumeric cheracters only. Do not specify cookie_path and cookie_domain at all.

The solution is also using ob_start. This function guarantees all the headers are sent successfully. Read the manual for details how to use it.

This might help you. Might be applied to all IE's. I haven't tested it myself.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php#100094

Here is the part from the page:

For those of your banging your head as to why a cookie is not present when Internet Explorer 6 prints, the explanation is quite interesting. After a bit of investigation, a cookie with an expiration time other than 0 fails to be passed from IE6 to the server when printing. A cookie with an expiration time of 0 is sent.

Therefore:

setcookie("TestCookie", $value, time()+3600); //will not be sent from Print / Print Preview in IE6

setcookie("TestCookie", $value, 0); //will be sent from Print / Print Preview in IE6

I'll let everyone figure out who's bright idea it was to not send normal expiring cookies when printing in IE6...