HTTP cookie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by WojPob (talk | contribs) at 17:49, 23 November 2001. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

A packet of information sent by an HTTP server to a World Wide Web browser and then sent back by the browser each time it accesses that server. Cookies can contain any arbitrary information the server chooses and are used to maintain state between otherwise stateless HTTP transactions. Typically this is used to authenticate or identify a registered user of a web site without requiring them to sign in again every time they access that site. Other uses are, e.g. maintaining a "shopping basket" of goods you have selected to purchase during a session at a site, site personalisation (presenting different pages to different users), tracking a particular user's access to a site.

This article (or an earlier version of it) contains material from FOLDOC, used with permission.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HTTP_cookie&oldid=643349689"