问题
What is the distinction between Sessions and Cookies in PHP?
回答1:
A cookie is a bit of data stored by the browser and sent to the server with every request.
A session is a collection of data stored on the server and associated with a given user (usually via a cookie containing an id code)
回答2:
Cookies are used to identify sessions. Visit any site that is using cookies and pull up either Chrome inspect element and then network or FireBug if using Firefox.
You can see that there is a header sent to a server and also received called Cookie. Usually it contains some personal information (like an ID) that can be used on the server to identify a session. These cookies stay on your computer and your browser takes care of sending them to only the domains that are identified with it.
If there were no cookies then you would be sending a unique ID on every request via GET or POST. Cookies are like static id's that stay on your computer for some time.
A session is a group of information on the server that is associated with the cookie information. If you're using PHP you can check the session.save_path location and actually "see sessions". They are either files on the server filesystem or backed in a database.
回答3:
A session is a chunk of data maintained at the server that maintains state between HTTP requests. HTTP is fundamentally a stateless protocol; sessions are used to give it statefulness.
A cookie is a snippet of data sent to and returned from clients. Cookies are often used to facilitate sessions since it tells the server which client handled which session. There are other ways to do this (query string magic etc) but cookies are likely most common for this.
回答4:
The main difference between a session and a cookie is that session data is stored on the server, whereas cookies store data in the visitor’s browser.
Sessions are more secure than cookies as it is stored in server. Cookie can be turned off from browser.
Data stored in cookie can be stored for months or years, depending on the life span of the cookie. But the data in the session is lost when the web browser is closed.
回答5:
Cookies are stored in browser as a text file format.It stores limited amount of data, up to 4kb[4096bytes].A single Cookie can not hold multiple values but yes we can have more than one cookie.
Cookies are easily accessible so they are less secure. The setcookie() function must appear BEFORE the tag.
Sessions are stored in server side.There is no such storage limit on session .Sessions can hold multiple variables.Since they are not easily accessible hence are more secure than cookies.
回答6:
Session
Session is used for maintaining a dialogue between server and user. It is more secure because it is stored on the server, we cannot easily access it. It embeds cookies on the user computer. It stores unlimited data.
Cookies
Cookies are stored on the local computer. Basically, it maintains user identification, meaning it tracks visitors record. It is less secure than session. It stores limited amount of data, and is maintained for a limited time.
回答7:
One part missing in all these explanations is how are Cookies and Session linked- By SessionID cookie. Cookie goes back and forth between client and server - the server links the user (and its session) by session ID portion of the cookie. You can send SessionID via url also (not the best best practice) - in case cookies are disabled by client.
Did I get this right?
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6339783/what-is-the-difference-between-sessions-and-cookies-in-php