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HTTP::Cookie

HTTP::Cookie is a ruby library to handle HTTP cookies in a way both compliant with RFCs and compatible with today's major browsers.

It was originally a part of the Mechanize library, separated as an independent library in the hope of serving as a common component that is reusable from any HTTP related piece of software.

The following is an incomplete list of its features:

• Its behavior is highly compatible with that of today's major web browsers.

• It is based on and conforms to RFC 6265 (the latest standard for the HTTP cookie mechanism) to a high extent, with real world conventions deeply in mind.

• It takes eTLD (effective TLD, also known as "Public Suffix") into account just as major browsers do, to reject cookies with an eTLD domain like "org", "co.jp", or "appspot.com". This feature is brought to you by the domain_name gem.

• The number of cookies and the size are properly capped so that a cookie store does not get flooded.

• It supports the legacy Netscape cookies.txt format for serialization, maximizing the interoperability with other implementations.

• It supports the cookies.sqlite format adopted by Mozilla Firefox for backend store database which can be shared among multiple program instances.

• It is relatively easy to add a new serialization format or a backend store because of its modular API.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'http-cookie'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install http-cookie

Usage

########################
# Client side example 1
########################

# Initialize a cookie jar
jar = HTTP::CookieJar.new

# Load from a file
jar.load(filename) if File.exist?(filename)

# Store received cookies, where uri is the origin of this header
header["Set-Cookie"].each { |value|
  jar.parse(value, uri)
}

# ...

# Set the Cookie header value, where uri is the destination URI
header["Cookie"] = HTTP::Cookie.cookie_value(jar.cookies(uri))

# Save to a file
jar.save(filename)


########################
# Client side example 2
########################

# Initialize a cookie jar using a Mozilla compatible SQLite3 backend
jar = HTTP::CookieJar.new(store: :mozilla, filename: 'cookies.sqlite')

# There is no need for load & save in this backend.

# Store received cookies, where uri is the origin of this header
header["Set-Cookie"].each { |value|
  jar.parse(value, uri)
}

# ...

# Set the Cookie header value, where uri is the destination URI
header["Cookie"] = HTTP::Cookie.cookie_value(jar.cookies(uri))


########################
# Server side example
########################

# Generate a domain cookie
cookie1 = HTTP::Cookie.new("uid", "u12345", domain: 'example.org',
                                            for_domain: true,
                                            path: '/',
                                            max_age: 7*86400)

# Add it to the Set-Cookie response header
header['Set-Cookie'] = cookie1.set_cookie_value

# Generate a host-only cookie
cookie2 = HTTP::Cookie.new("aid", "a12345", origin: my_url,
                                            path: '/',
                                            max_age: 7*86400)

# Add it to the Set-Cookie response header
header['Set-Cookie'] = cookie2.set_cookie_value

Incompatibilities with Mechanize::Cookie/CookieJar

There are several incompatibilities between Mechanize::Cookie/CookieJar and HTTP::Cookie/CookieJar. Below is how to rewrite existing code written for Mechanize::Cookie with equivalent using HTTP::Cookie:

• Mechanize::Cookie.parse

  The parameter order changed in HTTP::Cookie.parse.

    # before
    cookies1 = Mechanize::Cookie.parse(uri, set_cookie1)
    cookies2 = Mechanize::Cookie.parse(uri, set_cookie2, log)
  
    # after
    cookies1 = HTTP::Cookie.parse(set_cookie1, uri_or_url)
    cookies2 = HTTP::Cookie.parse(set_cookie2, uri_or_url, logger: log)
    # or you can directly store parsed cookies in your jar
    jar.parse(set_cookie1, uri_or_url)
    jar.parse(set_cookie1, uri_or_url, logger: log)
  

• Mechanize::Cookie#version, #version=

  There is no longer a sense of version in the HTTP cookie specification. The only version number ever defined was zero, and there will be no other version defined since the version attribute has been removed in RFC 6265.

• Mechanize::Cookie#comment, #comment=

  Ditto. The comment attribute has been removed in RFC 6265.

• Mechanize::Cookie#set_domain

  This method was unintentionally made public. Simply use HTTP::Cookie#domain=.

    # before
    cookie.set_domain(domain)
  
    # after
    cookie.domain = domain
  

• Mechanize::CookieJar#add, #add!

  Always use HTTP::CookieJar#add.

    # before
    jar.add!(cookie1)
    jar.add(uri, cookie2)
  
    # after
    jar.add(cookie1)
    cookie2.origin = uri; jar.add(cookie2)  # or specify origin in parse() or new()
  

• Mechanize::CookieJar#clear!

  Use HTTP::Cookiejar#clear.

    # before
    jar.clear!
  
    # after
    jar.clear
  

• Mechanize::CookieJar#save_as

  Use HTTP::CookieJar#save.

    # before
    jar.save_as(file)
  
    # after
    jar.save(file)
  

• Mechanize::CookieJar#jar

  There is no direct access to the internal hash in HTTP::CookieJar since it has introduced an abstract store layer. If you want to tweak the internals of the hash store, try creating a new store class referring to the default store class HTTP::CookieJar::HashStore.

  If you desperately need it you can access it by jar.store.instance_variable_get(:@jar), but there is no guarantee that it will remain available in the future.

HTTP::Cookie/CookieJar raises runtime errors to help migration, so after replacing the class names, try running your test code once to find out how to fix your code base.

File formats

The YAML serialization format has changed, and HTTP::CookieJar#load cannot import what is written in a YAML file saved by Mechanize::CookieJar#save_as. HTTP::CookieJar#load will not raise an exception if an incompatible YAML file is given, but the content is silently ignored.

Note that there is (obviously) no forward compatibillity with this. Trying to load a YAML file saved by HTTP::CookieJar with Mechanize::CookieJar will fail in runtime error.

On the other hand, there has been (and will ever be) no change in the cookies.txt format, so use it instead if compatibility is significant.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request