Set cookie before all other processing?

[IntegrityWebDev]

I'm in new territory and hoping for some help.

At the very top of my page I am setting a location cookie. To get the value of this cookie requires 2 database look ups, an xml look up and some math. Immediatly at the top of the HTML body (but down past this cookie set), I need to display the content of that cookie.

The problem I am getting is that the cookie is setting but the first time around the page isn't displaying the content. If I refresh it is there, if I watch it in Firebug it is setting but on the first load it isn't displaying.

I don't know enough about the mechanics of PHP to know if this is right or possible, but its almost like the page is continuing to process and display before the cookie has a chance to be completely set.

Given that is there any way to ensure that my cookie is set before any other processing takes place on the page?

Thanks,
Chris

[penders]

Presumably you are reading the cookie by examining the $_COOKIE[] array? As you have found, this will only be set on the next page request. To make this available in the current request you can set this array property at the same time you setcookie()...

function saveMyCookie($name, $value, ....) { 
  $ok = setcookie($name,$value,....); 
  if ($ok) $_COOKIE[$name] = $value; 
  return $ok; 
}

[IntegrityWebDev]

THAT WAS IT! I was looking for a solution in the wrong direction...thanks!