When ever wordpress home page refreshes the code is not reading the cookie as set anymore

Question

What is wrong with this code?

Code detects that user is coming from the expected referral site and adds cookie, but upon page refresh the code does not see the cookie and runs the !isset code and recreates the cookie again. not sure why. any ideas?

Just trying to insure that if its the right referral site, then create the cookie so that that user can use the entire site since they have a cookie and access now is on the cookie and not http_referrer.

below code is in functions.php in child theme and runs under init hook, so it runs on each page. That is what I was told was best.

add_action('init', 'bbb_referral_check' );

function bbb_referral_check() { 

if (!is_admin()){

$allowed_host = 'bbb.com';
$theurl =  $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
//$theurl =  wp_get_referrer();
$host = parse_url($theurl, PHP_URL_HOST);
$ishost = false;
if (strpos($host, $allowed_host) !== false) { $ishost = true; }

$javascript_ouput = "<script>console.log('Debug Info: " .$ishost. "');
</script>";
echo $javascript_ouput;

//echo "The allowed host: ".$allowed_host; exit;
if ( !isset($_COOKIE["bbb-referral"])) {
$javascript_ouput = "<script>console.log('Debug Info cookie not set: ');</script>";
        echo $javascript_ouput;

        if ($ishost)
    {
        $javascript_ouput = "<script>console.log('Debug Info is host 
match: " .$host. "');</script>";
        echo $javascript_ouput; 

        setcookie( "bbb-referral", "bbb-referral", time() + 1800, COOKIEPATH, COOKIE_DOMAIN);


        } else {        
        $javascript_ouput = "<script>console.log('Debug Info not host match: " .$host. "');</script>";
        echo $javascript_ouput; 


        //Redirect 
                wp_redirect('http://bbb.com' ); exit;
            }

}//isset

    $javascript_ouput = "<script>console.log('Debug Info cookie is set: ');</script>";
        echo $javascript_ouput;

}//admin


    }//function

Answer 1

You cannot use setcookie() after you've already started outputting stuff to the body (in this case your javascript-debugging, but possibly something else outside that function).

Are you suppressing PHP warnings? It should complain with "Cannot send headers; headers already sent" and tell you where the output was started.

To get rid of the problem regarding the javascript in this function, you could append the script-tags to a variable and echo them in one go after you've set the cookie (or redirected). Something like this (not tested, may contain typos).

function bbb_referral_check() { 
    $javascript_ouput = "";
    if (!is_admin()){

        $allowed_host = 'bbb.com';
        $theurl =  $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
        //$theurl =  wp_get_referrer();
        $host = parse_url($theurl, PHP_URL_HOST);
        $ishost = false;
        if (strpos($host, $allowed_host) !== false) { $ishost = true; }

        $javascript_ouput .= "<script>console.log('Debug Info: " .$ishost. "');</script>";

        //echo "The allowed host: ".$allowed_host; exit;
        if ( !isset($_COOKIE["bbb-referral"])) {
            $javascript_ouput .= "<script>console.log('Debug Info cookie not set: ');</script>";
            if ($ishost) {
                $javascript_ouput .= "<script>console.log('Debug Info is host match: " . $host . "');</script>";
                setcookie( "bbb-referral", "bbb-referral", time() + 1800, COOKIEPATH, COOKIE_DOMAIN);
                } else {        
                    $javascript_ouput .= "<script>console.log('Debug Info not host match: " .$host. "');</script>";
                    //Redirect 
                    wp_redirect('http://bbb.com' ); exit;
                }

        }//isset

        $javascript_ouput .= "<script>console.log('Debug Info cookie is set: ');</script>";
    }//admin
    echo $javascript_ouput;
}