How Do Cookies Work In Website Development? What Are Their Limitations?

Cookies are small pieces of information stored by the server on the browser.  They are of two types:

1) Temporary – Also called Session cookies, these are stored in the memory of the browser.  They are temporary as they last until the browser is closed.

2) Persistent – These types of cookies are saved on the hard drive of the client, so they persist for an indefinite period of time.

HOW COOKIES WORK

When the server needs to create a cookie it sends a SET-COOKIE header to the browser via HTTP HEADER.  Once the cookie has been created by the browser, all requests made by the browser will include this cookie in the header.

PROPERTIES OF COOKIES

The following are the properties of cookies:

o DOMAIN – The domain with which this cookie is associated.  The cookie will only be sent if this domain is requested.
o EXPIRES – Sets the expiration date of the cookie, and makes the cookie persistent.
o HASKEYS – This is a Boolean value and can be set to true to create a COOKIE DICTIONARY.  A Cookie Dictionary is a cookie that stores multiple key value pairs.
o NAME – The name given to the cookie
o SECURE – This property is a Boolean value, and default is false.  It specifies whether the cookie is to be sent over a secure connection only or not.
o VALUE – The value of the cookie
o VALUES – When the cookie is a cookie dictionary this property contains all the key value pairs.

LIMITATIONS OF COOKIES
1) A cookie can only contain 4KB of data.
2) Cookies can only store string values.
3) Cookies are browser dependent.  Also, if a user disables cookies on his/her computer any cookie-enabled site will not work.