How Can I Create Cookies That Never Expire in PHP?

Ensuring Cookie Immortality

The issue of cookies expiring can be a hindrance to maintaining persistent data. However, let's delve deeper into the problem and explore the solution to set cookies that never expire.

Php's cookie documentation provides options to set an expiration date, but none that explicitly states "never expire." Is such a configuration possible? If so, how can we achieve it?

The answer lies in taking advantage of a distant expiration date. By setting the expiration time in the future, we effectively extend the cookie's lifespan. To accomplish this, we can use code like the following:

setcookie(
  "CookieName",
  "CookieValue",
  time() + (10 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60)
);

With this approach, we set the cookie's expiration date to ten years from the current time. By choosing a sufficiently far future date, we effectively eliminate the possibility of the cookie expiring prematurely.

However, note that there are limitations to this approach when using 32-bit PHP versions. Dates beyond 2038 may not be represented accurately due to numerical overflow.

In more recent times, modern web browsers have imposed additional restrictions. For instance, Chrome M104 restricts cookie expiration dates to within 400 days in the future. This means that the far future date approach may not be effective in all scenarios.

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