Hello! This is a pretty dumb question this time, but for some reason, I can't seem to get this to work correctly. I did everything by the docs, and yet I still can't seem to get it to work. Here is my problem:

I have a CGI program that uses cookies (hopefully merlyn won't -- me for not reading his latest Web Techniques article well enough *smiles*) to maintain a users 'login'. To create the cookies, this code is exectued:

my $q = new CGI;

my $cke1 = new CGI::Cookie(
-name => $in{usr},
-value => $val,
-expires => '+1h',);

print $q->header(-cookie=>$cke1);
[download]

which seems to work very well - by the way, the value is the users password MD5ed with some other secret stuff (I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you).

Now, I wanted to write a simple routine to log the person out, so that their little cookie would simply disapear into the magnetic oblivion that is the users hard drive. Easy, right? All I have to do is create another cookie, by the same name, with an expiration that is negative! So here is what I tried:

my $q = new CGI;
my $cke1 = new CGI::Cookie(
-name => $usr,
-value => $pwd,
-expires => '-1d',);

print $q->redirect(
-cookie=>$cke1,
-uri=>'http://mypage.com/my_login.html');
[download]

Now, as you can see, the cookie is the same, I just changed the expiration from an hour ahead of when the cookie was made (as was in the login code) to a day previous of when the code was executed, therefore telling the computer that that patricular cookie should have expired ASAP! Then, a simple redirect header takes the user to the login page, setting them up to log right back in!

Now, am I missing something here, because this seems like a perfectly logical way to do things, but it DOESN'T work! The logout code executes fine, but the cookie doesn't actually expire, so it is futile!

I am tired, and don't feel well, so I may be missing something, so please help me out fellow monks! Thanks!

r. j o s e p h
"Violence is a last resort of the incompetent" - Salvor Hardin, Foundation by Issac Asimov

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.