Zebra Cookie  

A ridiculously small (~500 bytes minified) JavaScript API for writing, reading and deleting browser cookies

Features

• very easy to write, read and delete cookies
• simple and intuitive syntax
• extremely small: with around 500 bytes when minified (350 bytes gzipped), it is probably the smallest and most optimized API for handling browser cookies

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Demo

See the demos

Installation

Zebra Cookie is available as a npm package. To install it use:

# the "--save" argument adds the plugin as a dependency in packages.json
npm install zebra_cookie --save

How to use

Load Zebra Cookie:

<script src="path/to/zebra_cookie.min.js"></script>

Alternatively, you can load Zebra Cookie from JSDelivr CDN like this:

<!-- for the most recent version, not recommended in production -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/zebra_cookie@latest/dist/zebra_cookie.min.js"></script>

<!-- for a specific version -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/zebra_cookie.min.js"></script>

<!-- replacing "min" with "src" will serve you the non-compressed version -->

Usage

// at this point "Cookie" object will be available in the global namespace
// the object exposes 3 methods that you can use to write, read and delete cookies

// create a session cookie (expires when the browser closes)
Cookie.write('cookie_name', 'cookie_value');

// create a cookie that expires in 1 day
Cookie.write('cookie_name', 'cookie_value', 24 * 60 * 60);

// read a cookie’s value
// following the examples above, this should return "cookie_value"
Cookie.read('cookie_name');

// the "read" method returns null if the cookie doesn’t exist
Cookie.read('non_existing_cookie_name');

// delete the cookie
Cookie.destroy('cookie_name');

Methods

destroy(name)

Removes a cookie from the browser.

Returns TRUE on success or FALSE otherwise.

Arguments

name - the name of the cookie to remove

// create a session cookie (expires when the browser closes)
Cookie.write('cookie_name', 'cookie_value');

// delete the cookie
Cookie.destroy('cookie_name');

read(name)

Reads the value of a cookie.

Returns the value of the requested cookie or null if the cookie doesn't exist.

Arguments

name - the name of the cookie to read

// create a session cookie (expires when the browser closes)
Cookie.write('cookie_name', 'cookie_value');

// read a cookie's value
// following the examples above, this should return "cookie_value"
Cookie.read('cookie_name');

write(name, value, [expire = 0], [path = /], [domain = ""], [secure = FALSE])

Sets a cookie in the browser.

Returns TRUE if the cookie was successfully set, or FALSE otherwise.

Arguments

name - The name of the cookie to set

value - The value to set

expire - (optional) - The life time of the cookie, in seconds. If set to 0, or omitted, the cookie will expire at the end of the session (when the browser closes).

path - (optional) - The path on the server in which the cookie will be available on. If set to /, the cookie will be available within the entire domain. If set to /foo/, the cookie will only be available within the /foo/ directory and all subdirectories such as /foo/bar/ of the domain. If omitted, it will be set to /.

domain - (optional) - The domain that the cookie will be available on. To make the cookie available on all sub-domains of example.com, domain should be set to to .example.com. The . (dot) is not required but makes it compatible with more browsers. Setting it to www.example.com will make the cookie available only in the www sub-domain.

secure - (optional) - Indicates whether cookie information should only be transmitted over a HTTPS connection. Default is FALSE.

// create a session cookie (expires when the browser closes)
Cookie.write('cookie_name', 'cookie_value');

// create a cookie that expires in 1 day
Cookie.write('cookie_name', 'cookie_value', 24 * 60 * 60);