How should I set an arbitrary session value in a plugin?

Question

I have some data I want to store in session:

$data = array
(
    'id' => '23539471'
    'token' => 'cf310b81-9431-4303-804d-c1635ae29278'
);

In my plugin I am doing this:

new HttpCookie('myCookieName', $data, [ 'expire' => time() + 3600 ]);

When I dd() that I can see the cookie as expected:

Craft\HttpCookie#1
(
    [name] => 'myCookieName'
    [value] => array
    (
        'id' => '23539471'
        'token' => 'cf310b81-9431-4303-804d-c1635ae29278'
    )
    [domain] => ''
    [expire] => 1427328767
    [path] => '/'
    [secure] => true
    [httpOnly] => true
    [CComponent:_e] => null
    [CComponent:_m] => null
)

However on the next page load the cookie is null:

$cookie = craft()->request->getCookie('myCookieName');

What am I doing wrong here?

::::EDIT::::

I have also tried this which seems to make the cookie available in the current request, but it's null on the next request:

$cookie = new HttpCookie('myCookieName', $data);
$cookie->expire = time() + 3600;

craft()->request->cookies->add('myCookieName', $cookie);

Answer 1

Try this:

$cookie = new HttpCookie('myCookieName', $data, [ 'expire' => time() + 3600 ]);
craft()->request->getCookies()->add( $cookie->name, $cookie );

Your code for reading the cookie is fine.

Also – since you use the term "session value" and tagged your question w/ "security" – I'd like to point out that cookies and session variables are different things. The former is stored on the client (the browser), the latter only on the server.

Unless you specifically need a cookie (e.g. because you want the data to persist a certain amount of time) it might be better to just create a basic session variable, using the HttpSession service:

craft()->httpSession->add( $key, $value ); // Set the session variable
craft()->httpSession->get( $key ); // Get the session variable

Read more about session variables vs. cookies here