Set a cookie to never expire

Question

Looking at the php documentation on setting a cookie I see that I can set an expiration date for the cookie   You can set the cookie to expire at the end of the browser session or at some time in the future but I do not see a way to set the cookie to never expire   Is this even possible and how is this accomplished

User · Answer

You shouldn t do that and that s not possible anyway  If you want you can set a greater value such as 10 years ahead   By the way  I have never seen a cookie with such requirement

User · Answer

Can t you just say a never ending loop  cookie expires as current date   1 so it never hits the date it s supposed to expire on because it s always tomorrow  A bit overkill but just saying

User · Answer

Maximum value  2147483647  setcookie  CookieName    CookieValue   2147483647     To avoid integer overflow the timestamp should be set to   2 31 - 1   2147483647   2038-01-19 04 14 07   Setting a higher value might cause problems with older browsers    Also see the RFC about cookies    Max-Age value   OPTIONAL   The value of the Max-Age attribute is delta-seconds    the lifetime of the cookie in seconds  a decimal non-negative   integer   To handle cached cookies correctly  a client SHOULD   calculate the age of the cookie according to the age calculation   rules in the HTTP 1 1 specification  RFC2616    When the age is   greater than delta-seconds seconds  the client SHOULD discard the   cookie   A value of zero means the cookie SHOULD be discarded   immediately     and RFC 2616  14 6 Age      If a cache receives a value larger than the largest positive         integer it can represent  or if any of its age calculations         overflows  it MUST transmit an Age header with a value of         2147483648  2 31     http   www faqs org rfcs rfc2616 html

User · Answer

While that isn t exactly possible you could do something similar to what Google does and set your cookie to expire Jan 17  2038 or something equally far off    In all practicality you might be better off setting your cookie for 10 years or 60 60 24 365 10  which should outlive most of the machines your cookie will live on

User · Answer

I m not sure but aren t cookies deleted at browser close  I somehow did a never expiring cookie and chrome recognized expired date as  at browser close

User · Answer

If you want to persist data on the client machine permanently -or at least until browser cache is emptied completely  use Javascript local storage   https   developer mozilla org en-US docs DOM Storage localStorage  Do not use session storage  as it will be cleared just like a cookie with a maximum age of Zero

User · Answer

All cookies expire as per the cookie specification  so this is not a PHP limitation   Use a far future date  For example  set a cookie that expires in ten years   setcookie     CookieName      CookieValue     time      10   365   24   60   60       Note that if you set a date past 2038 in 32-bit PHP  the number will wrap around and you ll get a cookie that expires instantly

User · Answer

My privilege prevents me making my comment on the first post so it will have to go here   Consideration should be taken into account of 2038 unix bug when setting 20 years in advance from the current date which is suggest as the correct answer above   Your cookie on January 19  2018    20 years  could well hit 2038 problem depending on the browser and or versions you end up running on

User · Answer

You can t but what if you set expire time to now   100 years

User · Answer

I believe that there isn t a way to make a cookie last forever  but you just need to set it to expire far into the future  such as the year 2100

User · Answer

Never and forever are two words that I avoid using due to the unpredictability of life   The latest time since 1 January 1970 that can be stored using a signed 32-bit integer is 03 14 07 on Tuesday  19 January 2038  231-1   2 147 483 647 seconds after 1 January 1970   This limitation is known as the Year 2038 problem  setCookie  name    value   strtotime  2038-01-19 03 14 07

User · Answer

Set a far future absolute time   setcookie  CookieName    CookieValue   2147483647     It is better to use an absolute time than calculating it relative to the present as recommended in the accepted answer   The maximum value compatible with 32 bits systems is   2147483647   2 31    year 2038

[php] Set a cookie to never expire

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