NAME¶
HTTP::Cookies - HTTP cookie jars
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
<
URL:http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/cookie_spec.html> and
<
URL:http://www.cookiecentral.com/>. This module also implements the new
style cookies described in
RFC 2965. 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.
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->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 <= 0 will delete this cookie. %rest defines various other
attributes like "Comment" and "CommentURL".
- $cookie_jar->save
- $cookie_jar->save( $file )
- 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 attribute ignore_discard is set, 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
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright 1997-2002 Gisle Aas
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.