Chapter 8: Handling Cookies

Source Code in This Chapter

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• SetCookies.java A servlet that sets six cookies. Three have the default expiration date, meaning that they should apply only until the user next restarts the browser. The other three use setMaxAge to stipulate that they should apply for the next hour, regardless of whether the user restarts the browser or reboots the computer to initiate a new browsing session.
• ShowCookies.java A servlet that creates a table of all cookies sent to it.
• ServletUtilities.java A class that defines several cookie-handling utilities.
• LongLivedCookie.java A small class that you can use instead of Cookie if you want your cookie to automatically persist when the client quits the browser.
• CustomizedSearchEngines.java A variation of the SearchEngines servlet shown in Chapter 6. Here, cookies are used to remember the user's previous selections. Uses the LongLivedCookie and SearchSpec classes. Warning: this example does not work in Tomcat 3.1. The final release of Tomcat 3.1 came out after the book went to print, and to my surprise, it doesn't support setting cookies in servlets that do sendRedirect. This works fine in other servers.
• SearchEnginesFrontEnd.java Front end to the CustomizedSearchEngines servlet. The previous user settings are used as the initial values in this front end. Warning: this example does not work in Tomcat 3.1. The final release of Tomcat 3.1 came out after the book went to print, and to my surprise, it doesn't support setting cookies in servlets that do sendRedirect. This works fine in other servers.
• ServletUtilities.java Small utility library used by most servlets in this chapter.

URLs in This Chapter

• Netscape's cookie specification (version 0).
• http://www.rfc-editor.org/ Starting point to obtain RFC 2109, the version 1 cookie specification.

General

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