phpman > perldoc > HTTP::Cookies(3pm)

NAME
    HTTP::Cookies - HTTP cookie jars

VERSION
    version 6.10

SYNOPSIS
      use HTTP::Cookies;
      $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new(
        file => "$ENV{'HOME'}/lwp_cookies.dat",
        autosave => 1,
      );

      use LWP;
      my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
      $browser->cookie_jar($cookie_jar);

    Or for an empty and temporary cookie jar:

      use LWP;
      my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
      $browser->cookie_jar( {} );

DESCRIPTION
    This class is for objects that represent a "cookie jar" -- that is, a database of all the HTTP
    cookies that a given LWP::UserAgent object knows about.

    Cookies are a general mechanism which server side connections can use to both store and retrieve
    information on the client side of the connection. For more information about cookies refer to
    Cookie Spec <http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/cookie_spec.html> and Cookie Central
    <http://www.cookiecentral.com>. This module also implements the new style cookies described in
    RFC 2965 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2965>. The two variants of cookies are supposed to be
    able to coexist happily.

    Instances of the class *HTTP::Cookies* are able to store a collection of Set-Cookie2: and
    Set-Cookie: headers and are able to use this information to initialize Cookie-headers in
    *HTTP::Request* objects. The state of a *HTTP::Cookies* object can be saved in and restored from
    files.

LIMITATIONS
    This module does not support Public Suffix <https://publicsuffix.org/> encouraged by a more
    recent standard, RFC 6265 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6265>.

    This module's shortcomings mean that a malicious Web site can set cookies to track your user
    agent across all sites under a top level domain. See t/publicsuffix.t in this module's
    distribution for details.

    HTTP::CookieJar::LWP supports Public Suffix, but only provides a limited subset of this module's
    functionality and does not support standards older than *RFC 6265*.

METHODS
    The following methods are provided:

    $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new
        The constructor takes hash style parameters. The following parameters are recognized:

          file:            name of the file to restore cookies from and save cookies to
          autosave:        save during destruction (bool)
          ignore_discard:  save even cookies that are requested to be discarded (bool)
          hide_cookie2:    do not add Cookie2 header to requests

        Future parameters might include (not yet implemented):

          max_cookies               300
          max_cookies_per_domain    20
          max_cookie_size           4096

          no_cookies   list of domain names that we never return cookies to

    $cookie_jar->get_cookies( $url_or_domain )
    $cookie_jar->get_cookies( $url_or_domain, $cookie_key,... )
        Returns a hash of the cookies that applies to the given URL. If a domainname is given as
        argument, then a prefix of "https://" is assumed.

        If one or more $cookie_key parameters are provided return the given values, or "undef" if
        the cookie isn't available.

    $cookie_jar->add_cookie_header( $request )
        The add_cookie_header() method will set the appropriate Cookie:-header for the
        *HTTP::Request* object given as argument. The $request must have a valid url attribute
        before this method is called.

    $cookie_jar->extract_cookies( $response )
        The extract_cookies() method will look for Set-Cookie: and Set-Cookie2: headers in the
        *HTTP::Response* object passed as argument. Any of these headers that are found are used to
        update the state of the $cookie_jar.

    $cookie_jar->set_cookie( $version, $key, $val, $path, $domain, $port, $path_spec, $secure,
    $maxage, $discard, \%rest )
        The set_cookie() method updates the state of the $cookie_jar. The $key, $val, $domain, $port
        and $path arguments are strings. The $path_spec, $secure, $discard arguments are boolean
        values. The $maxage value is a number indicating number of seconds that this cookie will
        live. A value of $maxage <= 0 will delete this cookie. The $version argument sets the
        version of the cookie; the default value is 0 ( original Netscape spec ). Setting $version
        to another value indicates the RFC to which the cookie conforms (e.g. version 1 for RFC
        2109). %rest defines various other attributes like "Comment" and "CommentURL".

    $cookie_jar->save
    $cookie_jar->save( $file )
    $cookie_jar->save( file => $file, ignore_discard => $ignore_discard )
        This method file saves the state of the $cookie_jar to a file. The state can then be
        restored later using the load() method. If a filename is not specified we will use the name
        specified during construction. If the $ignore_discard value is true (or not specified, but
        attribute *ignore_discard* was set at cookie jar construction), then we will even save
        cookies that are marked to be discarded.

        The default is to save a sequence of "Set-Cookie3" lines. "Set-Cookie3" is a proprietary LWP
        format, not known to be compatible with any browser. The *HTTP::Cookies::Netscape* sub-class
        can be used to save in a format compatible with Netscape.

    $cookie_jar->load
    $cookie_jar->load( $file )
        This method reads the cookies from the file and adds them to the $cookie_jar. The file must
        be in the format written by the save() method.

    $cookie_jar->revert
        This method empties the $cookie_jar and re-loads the $cookie_jar from the last save file.

    $cookie_jar->clear
    $cookie_jar->clear( $domain )
    $cookie_jar->clear( $domain, $path )
    $cookie_jar->clear( $domain, $path, $key )
        Invoking this method without arguments will empty the whole $cookie_jar. If given a single
        argument only cookies belonging to that domain will be removed. If given two arguments,
        cookies belonging to the specified path within that domain are removed. If given three
        arguments, then the cookie with the specified key, path and domain is removed.

    $cookie_jar->clear_temporary_cookies
        Discard all temporary cookies. Scans for all cookies in the jar with either no expire field
        or a true "discard" flag. To be called when the user agent shuts down according to RFC 2965.

    $cookie_jar->scan( \&callback )
        The argument is a subroutine that will be invoked for each cookie stored in the $cookie_jar.
        The subroutine will be invoked with the following arguments:

          0  version
          1  key
          2  val
          3  path
          4  domain
          5  port
          6  path_spec
          7  secure
          8  expires
          9  discard
         10  hash

    $cookie_jar->as_string
    $cookie_jar->as_string( $skip_discardables )
        The as_string() method will return the state of the $cookie_jar represented as a sequence of
        "Set-Cookie3" header lines separated by "\n". If $skip_discardables is TRUE, it will not
        return lines for cookies with the *Discard* attribute.

SEE ALSO
    HTTP::Cookies::Netscape, HTTP::Cookies::Microsoft

AUTHOR
    Gisle Aas <gisle AT activestate.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    This software is copyright (c) 2002 by Gisle Aas.

    This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl
    5 programming language system itself.