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.

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
########################

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

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

# Store received cookies
HTTP::Cookie.parse(set_cookie_header_value, origin: uri) { |cookie|
  jar << cookie
}

# Get the value for the Cookie field of a request header
cookie_header_value = jar.cookies(uri).join(', ')

# Save to a file
jar.save(filename)


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

# Generate a cookie
cookies = HTTP::Cookie.new("uid", "a12345", domain: 'example.org',
                                            for_domain: true,
                                            path: '/',
                                            max_age: 7*86400)

# Get the value for the Set-Cookie field of a response header
set_cookie_header_value = cookies.set_cookie_value(my_url)

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

    # before
    cookie1 = Mechanize::Cookie.parse(uri, set_cookie1)
    cookie2 = Mechanize::Cookie.parse(uri, set_cookie2, log)
  
    # after
    cookie1 = HTTP::Cookie.parse(set_cookie1, :origin => uri)
    cookie2 = HTTP::Cookie.parse(set_cookie2, :origin => uri, :logger => log)
  

• Mechanize::Cookie#set_domain

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

• Mechanize::CookieJar#add, #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!

    # before
    jar.clear!
  
    # after
    jar.clear
  

• Mechanize::CookieJar#save_as

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

HTTP::Cookie/CookieJar raise 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 required.

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