PHP for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fifth Edition

9. Cookies and Sessions

In This Chapter

What Are Cookies?

Creating Cookies

Reading from Cookies

Adding Parameters to a Cookie

Deleting a Cookie

What Are Sessions?

Creating a Session

Accessing Session Variables

Deleting a Session

Review and Pursue

Chapter 8, “Creating Web Applications,” covered a number of techniques for developing more fully realized websites. One missing piece—the focus of this chapter—is how to maintain “state” as the user traverses a multipage site. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless technology, meaning that it has no built-in method for tracking a user or remembering data from one page of an application to the next. This is a serious problem, because e-commerce applications, user registration and login ...