note 61695 deleted from function.setcookie by betz

Note Submitter: shawn at ellev dot com ---- When setting a cookie be sure to have everything on the page inside one opening and closing "<?php ~ ?>" tag. I'm guessing that you could also have multiple open/closing php tags if they have no space between them (i.e. <?php ~ ?><?php ~ ?>) where the ">" and "<" are touching each other. I had code grouped at the top of the page with multiple open/close php tags that I'm guessing was causing white space to be passed back in a header to the browser before the cookie header was sent. This resulted in an error like the following: "Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /blah/blah/blah.php:3) in /blah/blah/blah.php on line 5" In this example the blank space that is outside of the <?php ~ ?> tags is on line:2 (error is occuring on line:3 but the white space is actually on line:2) and the cookie is attempting to be set on line:5. This is what the code might look like that would cause this error: =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= <?php require lib.php;?> <?php $cookie_data = "1234"; setcookie('cookie_name',$cookie_data); ?> To fix this problem you would change the code above to: =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= <?php require lib.php; $cookie_data = "1234"; setcookie('cookie_name',$cookie_data); ?> Note: in this example the file "lib.php" is included at load time and if it contains multiple php tags with any white space between them it will cause a similar error, so don't forget to check any files that your loading. Hope this helps.