lihp2014 / js-cookie

A simple, lightweight JavaScript API for handling cookies

JavaScript Cookie

A simple, lightweight JavaScript API for handling cookies

• Works in all browsers
• Heavily tested
• No dependency
• Unobstrusive JSON support
• Supports AMD/CommonJS
• RFC 6265 compliant
• Enable custom decoding
• ~800 bytes gzipped!

If you're viewing this at https://github.com/js-cookie/js-cookie, you're reading the documentation for the master branch. View documentation for the latest release (1.5.1).

Build Status Matrix (master branch)

Installation

Include the script (unless you are packaging scripts somehow else):

<script src="/path/to/js.cookie.js"></script>

Do not include the script directly from GitHub (http://raw.github.com/...). The file is being served as text/plain and as such being blocked in Internet Explorer on Windows 7 for instance (because of the wrong MIME type). Bottom line: GitHub is not a CDN.

js-cookie supports npm and Bower under the name js-cookie

It can also be loaded as an AMD or CommonJS module.

Basic Usage

Create a session cookie, valid to the path of the current page:

Cookies.set('name', 'value');

Create a cookie that expires 7 days from now, valid to the path of the current page:

Cookies.set('name', 'value', { expires: 7 });

Create an expiring cookie, valid across the entire site:

Cookies.set('name', 'value', { expires: 7, path: '/' });

Read cookie:

Cookies.get('name'); // => 'value'
Cookies.get('nothing'); // => undefined

Read all available cookies:

Cookies.get(); // => { name: 'value' }

Delete cookie:

Cookies.remove('name');

// Need to use the same path, domain and secure attributes that were used when writing the cookie
Cookies.set('name', 'value', { path: '/' });
Cookies.remove('name'); // fail!
Cookies.remove('name', { path: '/' }); // removed!

IMPORTANT! when deleting a cookie, you must pass the exact same path, domain and secure attributes that were used to set the cookie, unless you're relying on the default attributes.

Namespace conflicts

If there is any danger of a conflict with the namespace Cookies, the noConflict method will allow you to define a new namespace and preserve the original one. This is especially useful when running the script on third party sites e.g. as part of a widget or SDK.

// Assign the js-cookie api to a different variable and restore the original "window.Cookies"
var Cookies2 = Cookies.noConflict();
Cookies2.set('name', 'value');

Note: The .noConflict method is not necessary when using AMD or CommonJS, thus it is not exposed in those environments.

JSON

js-cookie provides unobstrusive JSON storage for cookies.

When creating a cookie you can pass an Array or Object Literal instead of a string in the value. If you do so, js-cookie will store the string representation of the object according to JSON.stringify:

Cookies.set('name', { foo: 'bar' });

When reading a cookie with the default Cookies.get api, you receive the string representation stored in the cookie:

Cookies.get('name'); // => '{"foo":"bar"}'

Cookies.get(); // => { name: '{"foo":"bar"}' }

When reading a cookie with the Cookies.getJSON api, you receive the parsed representation of the string stored in the cookie according to JSON.parse:

Cookies.getJSON('name'); // => { foo: 'bar' }

Cookies.getJSON(); // => { name: { foo: 'bar' } }

Note: To support IE6-8 you need to include the JSON-js polyfill: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js

Encoding

This project is RFC 6265 compliant. All special characters that are not allowed in the cookie-name or cookie-value are encoded with each one's UTF-8 Hex equivalent using percent-encoding.
The only character in cookie-name or cookie-value that is allowed and still encoded is the percent % character, it is escaped in order to interpret percent input as literal.
To override the default cookie decoding you need to use a converter.

Cookie Attributes

Cookie attributes defaults can be set globally by setting properties of the Cookies.defaults object or individually for each call to Cookies.set(...) by passing a plain object in the last argument. Per-call attributes override the default attributes.

expires

Define when the cookie will be removed. Value can be a Number which will be interpreted as days from time of creation or a Date instance. If omitted, the cookie becomes a session cookie.

Browser default: Cookie is removed when the user closes the browser.

Examples:

Cookies.set('name', 'value', { expires: 365 });
Cookies.get('name'); // => 'value'
Cookies.remove('name');

path

Define the path where the cookie is available.

Browser default: Path of the page where the cookie was created

Examples:

Cookies.set('name', 'value', { path: '/' });
Cookies.get('name'); // => 'value'
Cookies.remove('name', { path: '/' });

Note regarding Internet Explorer:

Due to an obscure bug in the underlying WinINET InternetGetCookie implementation, IE’s document.cookie will not return a cookie if it was set with a path attribute containing a filename.

(From Internet Explorer Cookie Internals (FAQ))

This means one cannot set a path using path: window.location.pathname in case such pathname contains a filename like so: /check.html (or at least, such cookie cannot be read correctly).

domain

Define the domain where the cookie is available

Browser default: Domain of the page where the cookie was created

Examples:

Cookies.set('name', 'value', { domain: 'sub.domain.com' });
Cookies.get('name'); // => undefined (need to read at 'sub.domain.com')

secure

A Boolean indicating if the cookie transmission requires a secure protocol (https)

Browser default: No secure protocol requirement

Examples:

Cookies.set('name', 'value', { secure: true });
Cookies.get('name'); // => 'value'
Cookies.remove('name', { secure: true });

Converter

Create a new instance of the api that overrides the default decoding implementation.
All methods that rely in a proper decoding to work, such as Cookies.remove() and Cookies.get(), will run the converter first for each cookie.
The returning String will be used as the cookie value.

Example from reading one of the cookies that can only be decoded using the escape function:

document.cookie = 'escaped=%u5317';
document.cookie = 'default=%E5%8C%97';
var cookies = Cookies.withConverter(function (value, name) {
    if ( name === 'escaped' ) {
        return unescape(value);
    }
});
cookies.get('escaped'); // 北
cookies.get('default'); // 北
cookies.get(); // { escaped: '北', default: '北' }

Example for parsing the value from a cookie generated with PHP's setcookie() method:

// 'cookie+with+space' => 'cookie with space'
Cookies.withConverter(function (value) {
    return value.replace(/\+/g, ' ');
}).get('foo');

Contributing

Check out the Contributing Guidelines

Manual release steps

• Remove the "-pre" suffix of the "version" attribute of bower.json, package.json and component.json
• Remove the "-pre" suffix of the version number in the src/js.cookie.js file
• Commit with the message "Release version x.x.x"
• Create version tag in git
• Create a github release and upload the minified file
• Release on npm
• Increment and add the "-pre" suffix to the "version" attribute of bower.json, package.json and component.json
• Increment and add the "-pre" suffix to the version number in the src/js.cookie.js file
• Link the documentation of the latest release tag in the README.md
• Commit with the message "Prepare for the next development iteration"

Authors

• Klaus Hartl
• Fagner Brack
• And awesome contributors