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
	   "
".  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 v5.12.1							    2009-10-06							  HTTP::Cookies(3)