Session or Cookie [PHP]

I've created a "Recently Viewed Items" script that utilizes sessions to insert viewed products into a database. Then, If there is a session it will pull the products you have viewed.

But, It seems like the sessions 'clear'?

Last night I view开发者_如何学Pythoned about 10 products and it was successful but I then proceeded to go to sleep. Once I woke up and tested it again, my session did not exist anymore and it created a new session.

Edit: I put my computer to sleep before going to bed last night.

Now, this does not seem optimal but I think I am on the right path to success.

How would you approach this? Am I utilizing the best resources available to me?

That's correct, sessions have a timeout value. You can see what settings affect this by referring to the PHP session configuration options.

As an alternative, you could store it in cookies or a database. With cookies, you have a limited storage capacity. With the database, you can keep the data attached to the user, but it becomes more difficult to support anonymous users.

I also searched a lot to find an answer but doesn't get anything...and i realize that only my brain could help me and i found a way

set cookies like this

<?php if(isset($_COOKIE['recent']))

{$arr = $_COOKIE['recent'];
$arr = $arr." ".$_REQUEST['id'];}
setcookie('recent', $arr, time()+10000, '/');

?> then,

$pizza  =$_COOKIE['recent'];
$pieces = explode(" ", $pizza);
$key=0;
foreach ($pieces as $key => $value) {

echo here what you want }