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I think of cookies as a mechanism to send data across the network. That mechanism can be used to simulate persistence on the client, among other things. But at

I think of cookies as a mechanism to send data across the network. That mechanism can be used to simulate persistence on the client, among other things. But at least some of this conversation revolves around what the public perception of cookies is, and as for that, I really don't know. I wouldn't presume that anyone else knows either unless they've conducted a poll.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
>I think of cookies as a mechanism to send data across the network. That mechanism can be used to simulate persistence on the client, among other things. I can't get with that definition. A server that attempts to set a cookie is very explicitly asking for state persistence on the client in the otherwise stateless HTTP protocol exchange. It literally has no other purpose.
- javajosh 4y ago
  Cookies are a way for clients (and servers) to add data to HTTP requests. It's a header, plus the expectation that the client will add this data to subsequent requests sent within a certain timeframe. Consider that a similar effect can be achieved by adding an id to every link in the body of a response. But its still just a link. In fact, before cookies this is how you associated requests with each other into a "session". And indeed, this is still a way to do user tracking across domains without cookies and in a way that is impossible to block in general. What a thing is used for is not the thing itself.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    >plus the expectation that the client will add this data to subsequent requests sent within a certain timeframe That's the definition of "client-side state". Cookies have no purpose other than maintenance of client-side state. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265 "This document defines the HTTP Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields. These header fields can be used by HTTP servers to store state (called cookies) at HTTP user agents, letting the servers maintain a stateful session over the mostly stateless HTTP protocol."

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

>I think of cookies as a mechanism to send data across the network. That mechanism can be used to simulate persistence on the client, among other things. I can't get with that definition. A server that attempts to set a cookie is very explicitly asking for state persistence on the client in the otherwise stateless HTTP protocol exchange. It literally has no other purpose.

javajosh 4y ago
Cookies are a way for clients (and servers) to add data to HTTP requests. It's a header, plus the expectation that the client will add this data to subsequent requests sent within a certain timeframe. Consider that a similar effect can be achieved by adding an id to every link in the body of a response. But its still just a link. In fact, before cookies this is how you associated requests with each other into a "session". And indeed, this is still a way to do user tracking across domains without cookies and in a way that is impossible to block in general. What a thing is used for is not the thing itself.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  >plus the expectation that the client will add this data to subsequent requests sent within a certain timeframe That's the definition of "client-side state". Cookies have no purpose other than maintenance of client-side state. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6265 "This document defines the HTTP Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields. These header fields can be used by HTTP servers to store state (called cookies) at HTTP user agents, letting the servers maintain a stateful session over the mostly stateless HTTP protocol."