HTTP::Cookies(3)                               User Contributed Perl Documentation                              HTTP::Cookies(3)



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.



perl v5.12.4                                               2010-09-20                                           HTTP::Cookies(3)