Plugin: Cookie Plus

Hiya,

Sounds like a great little plugin. Will download this and have a play. I actually made one like this myself some time back but never released it as I didn’t have the time to neaten it all up as other things took precedence as they always tend to do!! 😉

Thanks for this one. I’m sure it will be very helpful to a lot of people.

Best wishes,

Mark

P.S. Just noticed that your signature has the same “Full list of plugins here” as mine does (minus the exclamation marks of course) 😉 Wonder who did that first? 😉

Hi Mark,

Nice that you like the idea of this plugin and hope that you will find it useful.

In writing the signature “Full list of plugins here” you were first, of course. I hope you will not charge any copyright fee, or will you? 😡

In writing the signature “Full list of plugins here” you were first, of course. I hope you will not charge any copyright fee, or will you? 😡

You can have it at a reduced rate of £10,000,000 😉

Just kidding 😊 Totally free of course 😉 😊 😉

Thanks again for releasing this one. Surely will be of great use to a lot of people.

Speak to you soon.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi,

I have updated the plugin Cookie Plus. You can download version 1.1 using the link in previous post.

In this release a new parameter - “event” was added. This parameter is used together with “method” parameter. If “method” parameter is set to “script”, then, using “event” parameter you can define when cookie will be set. If “event” parameter is not set or has a value “load”, then javascript will set cookie during page load event. If event parameter has a value “unload”, then javascript will set cookie during page unload event.

An example:

{exp:cookie_plus:set name="mycookie" value="hellow!" seconds="3600" method="script" event="unload"}

Hi Laisvunas

Your plugin looks really interesting - thanks. Would it be possible for you to give the community some example uses for the script? For example, I’m currently looking at ways to implement a very simple shopping cart for a site. Could Cookie Plus do this and if so how?

Many thanks

Jim

Hi Jim,

Having no experience in implementing shopping carts I cannot say if Cookie Plus plugin could somehow be useful for such purpose.

I use Cookie Plus plugin only when it is really complicated to pass some custom data from one page to another. One such case would be if you need to pass some custom date from a page containing search form to search results_page or no_results_page. In this case you cannot pass custom data using URL segments or PHP $_POST array (see here). So cookies is right solution for such case.

The weblog code example you provide (repeated below) works for me no problem but I wanted to use a simple conditional like the second code example I provide below.

{exp:cookie_plus:get name="mycookie" parse="inward"}
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="{cookie}" show="1|3|5"}
Some code
{/exp:weblog:entries}
{/exp:cookie_plus:get}

This below doesn’t work but something like that?

{exp:cookie_plus:set name="mycookie" value="news" seconds="3600"} 

{exp:cookie_plus:get name="mycookie" parse="inward"}
{if  {cookie} =="news" }
Some code
{/if}
{/exp:cookie_plus:get}

And one other question - if you have time and inclination - would you mind showing an example of how someone might set a cookie using some javascript and a text link or some other mechanism to trigger setting the cookie in the page while using your plugin?

That may be a little bit much to flush out for an example but if one is handy that would be great. 😊

Hi Rob,

I just released version 1.2 of Cookie Plus plugin. Now you can use retrieved cookie value in conditionals. That is, the code as this will work:

{exp:cookie_plus:get name="mycookie"}
{if  cookie=="news"}
Some code
{/if}
{/exp:cookie_plus:get}

Concerning your question

would you mind showing an example of how someone might set a cookie using some javascript and a text link or some other mechanism to trigger setting the cookie in the page while using your plugin?

I would say that using Cookie Plus plugin the cookie can be set either during page load or unload. If there is no parameter “event”, then the cookie will be set during page load event, as here:

{exp:cookie_plus:set name="mycookie" value="hellow!" seconds="3600" method="script"}

If there is parameter “event” and it has the value “unload”, then the cookie will be set during page unload event, as here:

{exp:cookie_plus:set name="mycookie" value="hellow!" seconds="3600" method="script" event="unload"}

There is no need to enter any additional javascript or text link.

This is just awesome! Thanks for revising 😊 I’m really looking forward to using this.

Sorry you may have just stated this, and I’m a little dense on this subject, but if I was looking to only set a cookie if a text link was clicked after the page loaded, can I set that cookie somehow using your plugin?

Or does your plugin just set it when the page initially loads or alternately when the page finishes? Sorry, I think I’m having difficulty understanding the concept and terminology of values of “unload” and “event.” That’s why if it was possible, I was hoping to see a basic visual example of code potentially used to set for an on click event or something similar.

My apology and thank you for your patience! 😊

Or does your plugin just set cookie when the page initially loads or alternately when the page finishes?

Correct.

if I was looking to only set a cookie if a text link was clicked after the page loaded, can I set that cookie somehow using your plugin?

To achieve this you should use not plugin but a simple javascript function. Try do as follows. First insert this into <head> part of your page:

<script>
function setCookie( name, value, expires, path, domain, secure ) {
    var today = new Date();
    today.setTime( today.getTime() );
    if ( expires ) {
        expires = expires * 1000;
    }
    var expires_date = new Date( today.getTime() + (expires) );
    [removed] = name+'='+escape( value ) +
        ( ( expires ) ? ';expires='+expires_date.toGMTString() : '' ) + //expires.toGMTString()
        ( ( path ) ? ';path=' + path : '' ) +
        ( ( domain ) ? ';domain=' + domain : '' ) +
        ( ( secure ) ? ';secure' : '' );
}
</script>

Then insert this into appropriate place inside <body> part of your page:

<a onclick="setCookie('mycookie', 'news', 3600, '/'); return false;">My link</a>

Hope this helps.

Thanks! I was confused but I’ve got it down now. This plugin is really going to be handy for me.

Hi, your plugin is excellent!

I just have one question: How can I retrieve the value of the cookie directly from PHP?

I’m using the cookie_plus plugin to store a value that I later need to retrieve for a query I’m making to a database. So I need the value stored in a php variable.

Something like

<?php

$my_cookie_value = (I don't know how to retrieve it);

?>

Thanks so much!

G.

Hi arteylogica,

To retrieve cookie value using PHP you can use the code as this:

<?php

$my_cookie_value = $_COOKIE["my_cookie_name"];

?>

Using PHP in templates is not secure, so I would advice to you to wrap your database query into a plugin and use that plugin together with Cookie Plus plugin. Suppose your plugin would be named “Arteylogica DB query” and had parameter “cookie” (or some other parameter which should get its value from cookie). Then you could write the code as this:

{exp:cookie_plus:get name="mycookie" parse="inward"}
{exp:arteylogica_db_query cookie="{cookie}"}
Some code
{/exp:arteylogica_db_query}
{/exp:cookie_plus:get}

Hope that helps.