NAME¶
gtkcookie - edit Netscape cookie file
SYNOPSIS¶
gtkcookie [
Gtk options ]
DESCRIPTION¶
Options¶
gtkcookie supports the command flags common to all Gtk applications.
There are no
gtkcookie-specific flags.
What happens at startup¶
On startup,
gtkcookie will try to find your Netscape cookie file by
looking for
~/.netscape/cookies. If
~/.netscape/cookies is
found,
gtkcookie will load the file and show it in a multi-column list.
Opening a cookie file¶
Regardless of whether
gtkcookie finds your cookie file, or you have to
open it manually, when you open the file, all of your Netscape cookies are
displayed in whatever order Netscape wrote them into the file.
Sorting a cookie file¶
You can sort the cookies by any column by clicking on the heading for that
column.
Human-readable dates¶
The final column is actually not stored in your cookie file, but is a
translation of Netscape's native date field. Netscape stores the date as the
number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970 (familiar to anyone who's spent any time on
Unix), but
gtkcookie translates those dates into human-readable expiry
dates in the final column.
Editing cookies¶
To edit a cookie, double-click on the cookie, and a cookie edit dialogue will
pop up. You'll notice that the date, in seconds since the epoch (the epoch is
1 Jan 1970), is not an editable field, whereas the human-readable date is.
Follow the format presented in the edit dialogue box, and as you edit the
human-readable date, the expiry date in seconds since the epoch will update
itself. Please note (as repeated in the bugs section below) that although
dates later than 2038 are supposed to present problems, (you'll see the date
in seconds since the epoch become -1) dates on or after 2036 seem to present
problems. I'm still looking into this.
Searching for text strings¶
Under the
Edit menu, select
Find. Type in a string or substring
that you wish to find, and press the
Find button. If the string or
substring is found anywhere in a cookie, that cookie will become selected, and
the view will scroll to that cookie, if necessary. Pressing
Find again
will search for the next instance, or pop up a "not found" dialogue
box if the string wasn't found. In its current version,
gtkcookie isn't
yet smart enough to re-start a search from the top of the cookie list, so if
you need to search from the top, hightlight the first cookie, and then do your
search.
Deleting cookies¶
Right click on a cookie, and select "Delete" from the popup menu, or
click on the cookie and press "Del" on your keyboard.
Creating cookies¶
Press the "Create Cookie" button. A cookie with dummy values will be
added to the cookie list, and the "Edit Cookie" dialogue box will
pop up so that you can edit the new cookie to your liking. Note that even if
you press "Cancel" immediately after creating a new cookie, the new
cookie, with its dummy values, will still be in the list. You'll have to
delete the cookie manually.
FILES¶
- ~/.netscape/cookies
- The Netscape cookie file in your home directory
SEE ALSO¶
None
NOTES¶
None
AUTHOR¶
Manni Wood: mwood@sig.bsh.com or pq1036@110.net
BUGS¶
1. The "Edit Cookie" dialogue has problems with on-the-fly conversion
of human-readable dates to the number of seconds since the epoch for dates
later than 2036. For some reason, despite the fact that the date is supposed
to overflow in 2038, the C function strptime flubs up the conversion for dates
larger than 1036.
Unfortunately, this means that when you edit a cookie whose expiry date is after
2036, the edit dialogue box shows the number of seconds since the epoch as -1.
There is currently no workaround to this problem, besides moving the date back
2 years.
2. Although the "find" feature is supposed to always highlight and
scroll to any found item, sometimes, the item becomes highlighted, but is
outside the current view.
3. The file open and save dialogues don't show directories beginning with a dot
(such as
.netscape!) but typing such directory names manually will
work.
4. Double-clicking in the scroll bar will pop up the "Edit Cookie"
dialogue box for the currently highlighted cookie.
5. Editing the cookie file while Netscape is running is futile, because Netscape
will re-write the cookie file when you exit Netscape, based on what's in its
memory, not what's in the cookie file. A popup menu in my programme warns you
of a running netscape... unless you're running Netscape 4.5. Netscape 4.5
doesn't seem to create the same lock file that earlier Netscapes used to.