Setting cookies on domain/subdomain

Question

Hi there good people of StackOverflow, I have a problem and I was hoping that some of you out there might be able to help me. Let's say I am supposed to create some kind of Wordpress web shop on www.webshop.com domain, written in English language, with a cookie named 'cartItems' available for that domain. Ok, not a problem.

The problem is that I also need to make a german version of the site and I need to make difference between english and german cookies.

Now, my question is, if for example the german site is on the www.webshop.com/de/ I can set a german cookie to be available only for the /de/ domain, right? But how can I set that english cookie will be available in all the domains except the /de/ one.

If that can't be done would it be possible if the german site was on de.webshop.com

Thank you for all the help

Answer 1

It is possible, although of course you have to use two different cookie name, one for the EN data and one for the DE data.

Using a different path (www.webshop.com for EN and www.webshop.com/de/ for DE):

// this will be available everywhere, both on the english version and the german one
setcookie ('my_en_cookie_name', 'some data', time() + 24*30*3600, '/');
// this will only be visible when accessing the german website, english version user won't be able to see it
setcookie ('my_de_cookie_name', 'some other data', time() + 24*30*3600, '/de/');

Path for cookie is backward blocking (it can only be read from the directory specified or from a subdirectory of it, not from a parent one), so if you set a cookie with the /de/ path, it can be read from /de/ or /de/foo/ but not from / or /bar/. In the same way if you set a cookie with a path of /, it can be read on /de/ or /de/foo/ or /bar/.

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Using a different domain (www.webshop.com for EN and de.webshop.com for DE):

// this will be available everywhere, both on the english version and the german one
setcookie ('my_en_cookie_name', 'some data', time() + 24*30*3600, '/', '.webshop.com');
// this will only be visible when accessing the german website, english version user won't be able to see it
setcookie ('my_de_cookie_name', 'some data', time() + 24*30*3600, '/', 'de.webshop.com');

PAY ATTENTION: Setting a cookie on the domain ".webshop.com" means that this cookie will be sent to every subdomain of webshop.com, no matter what it is. Make sure that's what you want.

Answer 2

There are 3 ways you can separate the English and German cookies

1) Domain: You could use a separate www. and de. subdomain as you mentioned. To me this would be the easiest

2) Path: You can use the path, but if your English cookie is set for "/" it will still be accessible under "/de/". So if you want to go this route you'd need to make a "/en/" path as Kerrek suggested.

3) Name: Give the German cookie a different name

You will need to do one of those 3 to have separate English and German cookies. I'd think that having a separate subdomain would be the best, because not just your cookie paths but all your asset paths will be the same regardless of language.