bradcathey has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I can hear the screams now. Yes, another cookie question. Before posting I did read a previous node which came close, but I'm still not getting it. So, before I go back to the dreaded javascript....

Here I check to see if the user has logged in. If they haven't, or it's been > 15 min, they are sent to the login script. Otherwise, a new "session" is started. I'm able to set the cookie, but I'm not able to read it. In the aforementioned node, is chromatic saying that I can't try to read a cookie and then set one at the same time? If so, how am I to get around it? Thanks in advance. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
use strict;
use CGI;
my $query = new CGI;
my $username = int(rand 1000000);

   my $cookie = $query->cookie('xmsessionID');  #check for cookie
      if (!$cookie) { 
         print "No cookie<br>";  #for testing purposes
         goto &login
      } else { 
         print "Cookie found: $cookie<br>";   #for testing purposes
      }
   #-------- write new cookie -----------
   my $newcookie = 
      $query->cookie(-name=>'xmsessionID',
                                -value=> $username,
                                -expires=>'+15m');
                                         
   print $query->header(-cookie=>$newcookie);

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—Brad
"A little yeast leavens the whole dough."

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Re: Not able to set and retrieve cookie
by b10m (Vicar) on Apr 28, 2004 at 20:10 UTC

    Cookies are part of the headers, so you can't first send Content-type: text/html\n\n, then some text and then the cookie header. Nope, you need to send it before any output.

    --
    b10m

    All code is usually tested, but rarely trusted.
[reply]
      b10m, thanks. That was it. Basically my cookie code was fine, it was just using the print statements for testing that was throwing me off. As soon as I moved the print "Content-type..."; below the cookie handling, everything was fine.
      #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use CGI;
my $query = new CGI;
my $username = int(rand 1000000);
my $result;

   my $cookie = $query->cookie('xmsessionID');  #check for cookie
   if (!$cookie) { 
      $result = "No cookie<br>"; 
   #goto &login;
   } else { 
      $result = "Cookie found: $cookie<br>"; 
   }
        
      #-------- write new cookie -----------
   my $newcookie = 
               $query->cookie(-name=>'xmsessionID',
                           -value=> $username,
                           -expires=>'+1m');
                                         
   print $query->header(-cookie=>$newcookie);
        
   print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
   print $result,"<br>";

      [download]

      —Brad
      "A little yeast leavens the whole dough."
[reply]
[d/l]
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        If you are using CGI (which you rightly should be as you are), you shouldn't manually output your headers. Calling $query->header(); will do it for you, and $query->header( -cookie => $newcookie ); will print out the Set-cookie header, as well as the Content-type header.

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