Why am I unable to fetch cookies in my CGI script? - perl

Question

I am setting a cookie in my CGI script and trying to read it, but the read is failing. What could be causing this?
Here is my script:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI;
use CGI::Cookie;
use CGI qw/:standard/;
use CGI;
my $cgi = new CGI;
my $cookie1 = $cgi->cookie( -name => 'ID', -value => 123456 );
my $cookie2 = $cgi->cookie( -name => 'NAME', -value => 'ABCDEF' );
print "Cookies:\n" . header( -cookie => [ $cookie1, $cookie2 ] );
my $id = $cgi->cookie('ID') || 'No ID cookie';
my $name = $cgi->cookie('NAME') || 'No Name cookie';
print "ID-Cookie :$id\n";
print "Name-Cookie :$name\n";
my %cookies = CGI::Cookie->fetch;
my $count = 0;
for ( keys %cookies ) {
$count++;
print "Cookie[$count]: $cookies{$_}\n";
}
print "Total cookies: $count\n";
Output:
Cookies:
Set-Cookie: ID=123456; path=/
Set-Cookie: NAME=ABCDEF; path=/
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 19:05:55 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
ID-Cookie :No ID cookie
Name-Cookie :No Name cookie
Total cookies: 0
I've also tried $cookies{'ID'}->value. That didn't work either.

Answer 1

A cookie is a string provided to a web browser which it will provide back to the web server in future requests, but it doesn't look like you used a browser. It looks like you didn't even execute the script as a CGI script!
The script creates an HTTP header (out of pure luck, judging by the Cookies: bit) which instructs the browser to set some cookies, then it displays the cookies it received.
The first time a browser fetches this page, it instructs the browser to set two cookies and that it didn't get any cookies.
The second time a browser fetches this page, it instructs the browser to set two cookies and that it received two cookies from the browser.
Simplified script:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw/:standard/;
my $cgi = CGI->new;
my $cookie1 = $cgi->cookie( -name => 'ID', -value => 123456 );
my $cookie2 = $cgi->cookie( -name => 'NAME', -value => 'ABCDEF' );
print header( -type => 'text/plain', -cookie => [ $cookie1, $cookie2 ] );
my $id = $cgi->cookie('ID') || 'No ID cookie';
my $name = $cgi->cookie('NAME') || 'No Name cookie';
print "ID-Cookie: $id\n";
print "Name-Cookie: $name\n";

Answer 2

I am not sure you are setting the cookie properly. Try:
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw/:standard/;
use CGI::Cookie;
my $cookie1 = CGI::Cookie->new(-name => 'ID',-value=>123456);
my $cookie2 = CGI::Cookie->new(-name => 'NAME',-value=>'ABCDEF');
Check out the documentation for CGI::Cookie.