Adding a Cookie Session to Shortcode Content

I have a shortcode which “wraps” <pre> and <code> content in a password array. This was created a while back and I’m struggling on how to add a cookie or some sort of session handler to this setup so that a user with a password doesn’t have to re-enter the password each and every time during a certain time frame.

As of right now, the user has to enter the password on each post to view the content.

I’ve looked into the setcookie but I do not understand how to incorporate that with the code I’m using (the code was not written by me and the developer is gone). I’m just the CSS designer of the site, trying to make sense out of this.

I understand that it should be something like this?

$cookie_name = "mycookie";
$cookie_value = $result; 
setcookie($cookie_name, $cookie_value,time()+3600*24,COOKIEPATH, COOKIE_DOMAIN);

This is the full code that’s currently in use:

add_filter( 'the_content', 'wrap_code_in_shortcode' , 9 );
function wrap_code_in_shortcode($content) {

    $content = preg_replace('/(<pre[^>]*>s*<code[^>]*>)/',"[protected_content]$1", $content);
    
    $content =  preg_replace('/(</code>s*</pre>)/', "$1[/protected_content]", $content);

    return $content;
}

add_shortcode( 'protected_content', 'protected_password_content' );
function protected_password_content( $atts, $content=null ) {

    if (in_array(@$_REQUEST['password'], array('password'))){
        $return = do_shortcode($content);

    } else {

        $return = '
        <span>To view this section, enter your access code.</span><br>
            <form action="" method="post">
            <input style="display:block; width: 69%; height: 50px; margin-right: 1%; padding: 0px; float: left; border:1px solid blue;border-radius:3px;" type="text" placeholder="   Access Code Here" name="password">
            <input style="display:block; margin: 0px;  width: 30%; height: 50px; padding: 0px;" type="submit" value="Show Content">
            </form>';
        }
    return $return;
}

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

Welcome to WordPress Development StackExchange site! In general you understand everything right, but there can be one important caveat: if some page content like page header, navigation menu, etc is already sent to the user, a try to set cookie from PHP script will give a following error: "Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by...". To avoid it you can add some javascript to your form and set a cookie from this javascript. Lets try the following code:

function protected_password_content( $atts, $content=null ) {

    // if password is sent via posting form, try to use it first
    // next try to get password from the cookie
    $userpass = isset( $_REQUEST['password'] ) ? $_REQUEST['password'] : ( isset( $_COOKIE['userpass'] ) ? $_COOKIE['userpass'] : NULL );

    if ( in_array( $userpass, array('password') ) ) {
        $return = do_shortcode($content);
    } else {
        $return = '
            <span>To view this section, enter your access code.</span><br>
            <form action="" method="post" onsubmit="putCookie(this)">
            <input style="display:block; width: 69%; height: 50px; margin-right: 1%; padding: 0px; float: left; border:1px solid blue;border-radius:3px;" type="text" placeholder="   Access Code Here" name="password" id="userpass">
            <input style="display:block; margin: 0px;  width: 30%; height: 50px; padding: 0px;" type="submit" value="Show Content">
            </form>
            <script>
            function putCookie(form) {
                var today = new Date();
                var expiry = new Date(today.getTime() + 24 * 3600 * 1000); // plus 1 day
                document.cookie = "userpass=" + escape(form.userpass.value) + "; path=/; expires=" + expiry.toGMTString();
            }
            </script>';
    }
    return $return;
}

You do not required to specify the cookie expire time. If you omit that part, the cookie will be set as so-called session cookie, which would be valid only until user closes his browser:

function putCookie(form) {
    document.cookie = "userpass=" + escape(form.userpass.value) + "; path=/";
}

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0