How to get cookie's expire time

Putting an encoded json inside the cookie is my favorite method, to get properly formated data out of a cookie. Try that:

$expiry = time() + 12345;
$data = (object) array( "value1" => "just for fun", "value2" => "i'll save whatever I want here" );
$cookieData = (object) array( "data" => $data, "expiry" => $expiry );
setcookie( "cookiename", json_encode( $cookieData ), $expiry );

then when you get your cookie next time:

$cookie = json_decode( $_COOKIE[ "cookiename" ] );

you can simply extract the expiry time, which was inserted as data inside the cookie itself..

$expiry = $cookie->expiry;

and additionally the data which will come out as a usable object :)

$data = $cookie->data;
$value1 = $cookie->data->value1;

etc. I find that to be a much neater way to use cookies, because you can nest as many small objects within other objects as you wish!

This is difficult to achieve, but the cookie expiration date can be set in another cookie. This cookie can then be read later to get the expiration date. Maybe there is a better way, but this is one of the methods to solve your problem.

You can set your cookie value containing expiry and get your expiry from cookie value.

// set
$expiry = time()+3600;
setcookie("mycookie", "mycookievalue|$expiry", $expiry);

// get
if (isset($_COOKIE["mycookie"])) {
  list($value, $expiry) = explode("|", $_COOKIE["mycookie"]);
}

// Remember, some two-way encryption would be more secure in this case. See: https://github.com/qeremy/Cryptee