1HTTP::Cookies(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation HTTP::Cookies(3)
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6 HTTP::Cookies - HTTP cookie jars
7
9 use HTTP::Cookies;
10 $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new(
11 file => "$ENV{'HOME'}/lwp_cookies.dat',
12 autosave => 1,
13 );
14 use LWP;
16 my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
17 $browser->cookie_jar($cookie_jar);
18 Or for an empty and temporary cookie jar:
20 use LWP;
22 my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
23 $browser->cookie_jar( {} );
24
26 This class is for objects that represent a "cookie jar" -- that is, a
27 database of all the HTTP cookies that a given LWP::UserAgent object
28 knows about.
29 Cookies are a general mechanism which server side connections can use
31 to both store and retrieve information on the client side of the con‐
32 nection. For more information about cookies refer to
33 <URL:http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html> and
34 <URL:http://www.cookiecentral.com/>. This module also implements the
35 new style cookies described in RFC 2965. The two variants of cookies
36 are supposed to be able to coexist happily.
37 Instances of the class HTTP::Cookies are able to store a collection of
39 Set-Cookie2: and Set-Cookie: headers and are able to use this informa‐
40 tion to initialize Cookie-headers in HTTP::Request objects. The state
41 of a HTTP::Cookies object can be saved in and restored from files.
42
44 The following methods are provided:
45 $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new
47 The constructor takes hash style parameters. The following parame‐
48 ters are recognized:
49 file: name of the file to restore cookies from and save cookies to
51 autosave: save during destruction (bool)
52 ignore_discard: save even cookies that are requested to be discarded (bool)
53 hide_cookie2: do not add Cookie2 header to requests
54 Future parameters might include (not yet implemented):
56 max_cookies 300
58 max_cookies_per_domain 20
59 max_cookie_size 4096
60 no_cookies list of domain names that we never return cookies to
62 $cookie_jar->add_cookie_header( $request )
64 The add_cookie_header() method will set the appropriate
65 Cookie:-header for the HTTP::Request object given as argument. The
66 $request must have a valid url attribute before this method is
67 called.
68 $cookie_jar->extract_cookies( $response )
70 The extract_cookies() method will look for Set-Cookie: and
71 Set-Cookie2: headers in the HTTP::Response object passed as argu‐
72 ment. Any of these headers that are found are used to update the
73 state of the $cookie_jar.
74 $cookie_jar->set_cookie( $version, $key, $val, $path, $domain, $port,
76 $path_spec, $secure, $maxage, $discard, \%rest )
77 The set_cookie() method updates the state of the $cookie_jar. The
78 $key, $val, $domain, $port and $path arguments are strings. The
79 $path_spec, $secure, $discard arguments are boolean values. The
80 $maxage value is a number indicating number of seconds that this
81 cookie will live. A value <= 0 will delete this cookie. %rest
82 defines various other attributes like "Comment" and "CommentURL".
83 $cookie_jar->save
85 $cookie_jar->save( $file )
86 This method file saves the state of the $cookie_jar to a file. The
87 state can then be restored later using the load() method. If a
88 filename is not specified we will use the name specified during
89 construction. If the attribute ignore_discard is set, then we will
90 even save cookies that are marked to be discarded.
91 The default is to save a sequence of "Set-Cookie3" lines.
93 "Set-Cookie3" is a proprietary LWP format, not known to be compati‐
94 ble with any browser. The HTTP::Cookies::Netscape sub-class can be
95 used to save in a format compatible with Netscape.
96 $cookie_jar->load
98 $cookie_jar->load( $file )
99 This method reads the cookies from the file and adds them to the
100 $cookie_jar. The file must be in the format written by the save()
101 method.
102 $cookie_jar->revert
104 This method empties the $cookie_jar and re-loads the $cookie_jar
105 from the last save file.
106 $cookie_jar->clear
108 $cookie_jar->clear( $domain )
109 $cookie_jar->clear( $domain, $path )
110 $cookie_jar->clear( $domain, $path, $key )
111 Invoking this method without arguments will empty the whole
112 $cookie_jar. If given a single argument only cookies belonging to
113 that domain will be removed. If given two arguments, cookies
114 belonging to the specified path within that domain are removed. If
115 given three arguments, then the cookie with the specified key, path
116 and domain is removed.
117 $cookie_jar->clear_temporary_cookies
119 Discard all temporary cookies. Scans for all cookies in the jar
120 with either no expire field or a true "discard" flag. To be called
121 when the user agent shuts down according to RFC 2965.
122 $cookie_jar->scan( \&callback )
124 The argument is a subroutine that will be invoked for each cookie
125 stored in the $cookie_jar. The subroutine will be invoked with the
126 following arguments:
127 0 version
129 1 key
130 2 val
131 3 path
132 4 domain
133 5 port
134 6 path_spec
135 7 secure
136 8 expires
137 9 discard
138 10 hash
139 $cookie_jar->as_string
141 $cookie_jar->as_string( $skip_discardables )
142 The as_string() method will return the state of the $cookie_jar
143 represented as a sequence of "Set-Cookie3" header lines separated
144 by "\n". If $skip_discardables is TRUE, it will not return lines
145 for cookies with the Discard attribute.
146
148 HTTP::Cookies::Netscape, HTTP::Cookies::Microsoft
149
151 Copyright 1997-2002 Gisle Aas
152 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
154 under the same terms as Perl itself.
155perl v5.8.8 2004-04-06 HTTP::Cookies(3)