Cookies.js

Cookies.js is a small client-side javascript library that makes managing cookies easy.

Features

• Caches cookie values, making sequential reads faster.
• Supports AMD / CommonJS loaders.
• Cross browser.
• Lightweight (less than 1 KB, minified and gzipped).
• RFC6265 Compliant.

Browser Compatibility

The following browsers have passed all of the Cookies.js unit tests:

• Chrome
• Firefox 3+
• Safari 4+
• Opera 10+
• Internet Explorer 6+

A Note About Encoding

Cookies.js URI encodes cookie keys and values, and expects cookie keys to be URI encoded when accessing a cookie. Keep this in mind when working with cookies on the server side.

.NET Users

Do not use HttpUtility.UrlEncode and HttpUtility.UrlDecode on cookie keys or values. HttpUtility.UrlEncode will improperly escape space characters to '+' and lower case every escape sequence. HttpUtility.UrlDecode will improperly unescape every '+' to a space character. Instead, use System.Uri.EscapeDataString and System.Uri.UnescapeDataString.

API Reference

Methods

Cookies.set(key, value [, options])

Alias: Cookies(key, value [, options])

Sets a cookie in the document. If the cookie does not already exist, it will be created.

Arguments:

key: A string value of the cookie key to set
value: A string value of the cookie value to set
options: An object containing additional parameters about the cookie (discussed below)

Returns:

The Cookies object is returned to support chaining.

The 'options' Object:

path: A string value of the path of the cookie
domain: A string value of the domain of the cookie
expires: A number (of seconds), a date parsable string, or a Date object of when the cookie will expire
secure: A boolean value of whether or not the cookie should only be available over SSL

If any property is left undefined, the browser's default value will be used instead. A default value for any property may be set in the Cookies.defaults object.

Why use 'expires' instead of 'max-age' (or why not both)?
Internet Explorer 6 - 8 do not support 'max-age', so Cookies.js always uses 'expires' internally. However, Cookies.js simplifies things by allowing the options.expires property to be used in the same way as 'max-age' (by setting options.expires to the number of seconds the cookie should exist for).

Example usage:

// Setting a cookie value
Cookies.set('key', 'value');

// Chaining sets together
Cookies.set('key', 'value').set('hello', 'world');

// Setting cookies with additional options
Cookies.set('key', 'value', { domain: 'www.example.com', secure: true });

// Setting cookies with expiration values
Cookies.set('key', 'value', { expires: 600 }); // Expires in 10 minutes
Cookies.set('key', 'value', { expires: '01/01/2012' });
Cookies.set('key', 'value', { expires: new Date(2012, 0, 1) });

// Using the alias
Cookies('key', 'value', { secure: true });

Cookies.get(key)

Alias: Cookies(key)

Retrieves the cookie value of the most locally scoped cookie with the specified key.

Arguments:

key: A string value of a cookie key

Returns:

The string value of the cookie.

Example Usage:

// First set a cookie
Cookies.set('key', 'value');

// Get the cookie value
Cookies.get('key'); // "value"

// Using the alias
Cookies('key'); // "value"

Cookies.expire(key [, options])

Alias: Cookies(key, undefined [, options])

Expires a cookie, removing it from the document.

Arguments:

key: A string value of the cookie key to expire
options: An object containing additional parameters about the cookie (discussed below)

Returns:

The Cookies object is returned to support chaining.

The 'options' Object:

path: A string value of the path of the cookie
domain: A string value of the domain of the cookie

If any property is left undefined, the browser's default value will be used instead. A default value for any property may be set in the Cookies.defaults object.

Example Usage:

// First set a cookie and get its value
Cookies.set('key', 'value').get('key'); // "value"

// Expire the cookie and try to get its value
Cookies.expire('key').get('key'); // undefined

// Using the alias instead
Cookies('key', undefined);

Properties

Cookies.enabled

A boolean value of whether or not the browser has cookies enabled.

Example Usage:

if (Cookies.enabled) {
    Cookies.set('key', 'value');
}

Cookies.defaults

An object representing default options to be used when setting and expiring cookie values. Cookies.defaults supports the following properties:

path: A string value of the path of the cookie
domain: A string value of the domain of the cookie
expires: A number (of seconds), a date parsable string, or a Date object of when the cookie will expire
secure: A boolean value of whether or not the cookie should only be available over SSL

By default, only Cookies.defaults.path is set to '/', all other properties are undefined. If any property is left undefined, the browser's default value will be used instead.

Example Usage:

Cookies.defaults = {
    path: '/',
    secure: true
};

Cookies.set('key', 'value'); // Will be secure and have a path of '/'
Cookies.expire('key'); // Will expire the cookie with a path of '/'

Change Log

0.3.0

• Rewrote the library from the ground up, using test driven development. The public API remains unchanged.
• Restructured project directories.

0.2.1

• Properly escaped a [ literal in the RFC6265 regular expression.

0.2.0

• Cookie values are no longer automatically JSON encoded/decoded. This featured was deemed out of the scope of the library. This change also removes the dependency on a JSON shim for older browsers.

0.1.7

• Changed cookie value encoding to only encode the special characters defined in RFC6265

0.1.6

• Added 'use strict'; directive.
• Removed some extraneous code.

0.1.5

• Added CommonJS module support.
• Setting an undefined value with Cookies.set now expires the cookie, mirroring the Cookies.expire alias syntax.
• Simplified how the document.cookie string is parsed.

0.1.4

• Fixed a bug where setting a cookie's secure value tofalse caused the Cookies.defaults.secure value to be used instead.

0.1.3

• Added aliases for Cookies.set and Cookies.expire.

0.1.2

• Set Cookies.defaults.path to '/'.
• Replaced escape and unescape function calls with encodeURIComponent and decodeURIComponent, because the former are deprecated.
• Cookie keys are now URI encoded in addition to cookie values.

0.1.1

• Cross browser fixes.

0.1.0

• Initial commit.