[php] How to get cookie's expire time

When I create a cookie, how to get cookie's expire time?

You can set your cookie value containing expiry and get your expiry from cookie value.

// set
$expiry = time()+3600;
setcookie("mycookie", "mycookievalue|$expiry", $expiry);

// get
if (isset($_COOKIE["mycookie"])) {
  list($value, $expiry) = explode("|", $_COOKIE["mycookie"]);
}

// Remember, some two-way encryption would be more secure in this case. See: https://github.com/qeremy/Cryptee

To get cookies expire time, use this simple method.

<?php

//#############PART 1#############
//expiration time (a*b*c*d) <- change D corresponding to number of days for cookie expiration
$time = time()+(60*60*24*365);
$timeMemo = (string)$time;

//sets cookie with expiration time defined above
setcookie("testCookie", "" . $timeMemo . "", $time);

//#############PART 2#############
//this function will convert seconds to days.
function secToDays($sec){

    return ($sec / 60 / 60 / 24);

}
//checks if cookie is set and prints out expiration time in days
if(isset($_COOKIE['testCookie'])){

    echo "Cookie is set<br />";
    if(round(secToDays((intval($_COOKIE['testCookie']) - time())),1) < 1){
        echo "Cookie will expire today.";
    }else{
        echo "Cookie will expire in " . round(secToDays((intval($_COOKIE['testCookie']) - time())),1) . " day(s)";
    }

}else{
    echo "not set...";
}

?>

You need to keep Part 1 and Part 2 in different files, otherwise you will get the same expire date everytime.

Putting an encoded json inside the cookie is my favorite method, to get properly formated data out of a cookie. Try that:

$expiry = time() + 12345;
$data = (object) array( "value1" => "just for fun", "value2" => "i'll save whatever I want here" );
$cookieData = (object) array( "data" => $data, "expiry" => $expiry );
setcookie( "cookiename", json_encode( $cookieData ), $expiry );

then when you get your cookie next time:

$cookie = json_decode( $_COOKIE[ "cookiename" ] );

you can simply extract the expiry time, which was inserted as data inside the cookie itself..

$expiry = $cookie->expiry;

and additionally the data which will come out as a usable object :)

$data = $cookie->data;
$value1 = $cookie->data->value1;

etc. I find that to be a much neater way to use cookies, because you can nest as many small objects within other objects as you wish!

When you create a cookie via PHP die Default Value is 0, from the manual:

If set to 0, or omitted, the cookie will expire at the end of the session (when the browser closes)

Otherwise you can set the cookies lifetime in seconds as the third parameter:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php

But if you mean to get the remaining lifetime of an already existing cookie, i fear that, is not possible (at least not in a direct way).

It seems there's a list of all cookies sent to browser in array returned by php's headers_list() which among other data returns "Set-Cookie" elements as follows:

Set-Cookie: cooke_name=cookie_value; expires=expiration_time; Max-Age=age; path=path; domain=domain

This way you can also get deleted ones since their value is deleted:

Set-Cookie: cooke_name=deleted; expires=expiration_time; Max-Age=age; path=path; domain=domain

From there on it's easy to retrieve expiration time or age for particular cookie. Keep in mind though that this array is probably available only AFTER actual call to setcookie() has been made so it's valid for script that has already finished it's job. I haven't tested this in some other way(s) since this worked just fine for me.

This is rather old topic and I'm not sure if this is valid for all php builds but I thought it might be helpfull.

For more info see:

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.headers-list.php
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.headers-sent.php