php - Accessing $_COOKIE immediately after setcookie()

Question

I'm trying to access a cookie's value (using $_COOKIE) immediately after calling the setcookie() function in PHP. When I do so, $_COOKIE['uname'] isn't set. Why?

Note, however, that $_COOKIE['uname'] is set as expected upon the next execution of the script, such as after a page refresh.

setcookie('uname', $uname, time() + 60 * 30);
echo "Cookie value: " . $_COOKIE['uname'];

Answer 1

The cookie isn't set until the response is sent back to the client, and isn't available in your PHP until the next request from the client after that.

However, when you set the cookie in your script, you can do:

setcookie('uname', $uname, time()+60*30);
$_COOKIE['uname'] = $uname;