ASP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

Cookies — Request.Cookies

Synopsis

Before discussing the Cookies collection, we'll briefly introduce/review the concept of HTTP cookies. This will be only a brief overview. For more information, visit either the Netscape Preliminary Specification at http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html, or visit Cookie Central, a clearinghouse of all cookie-related information. I can specifically recommend http://www.cookiecentral.com/unofficial_cookie_faq.htm.

The problem with a stateless protocol like HTTP is that it forces both the server and client to do a great deal of repetitive work. For example, with a truly stateless protocol, the web server would have to ask you who you are every single time you navigate to a page on the site—even if you navigate to this new page from another page within the same site. Likewise, your interaction would be limited to what you can enter and save on one page of information, because without some way of storing the data from one page, a second page has no way of getting to that data.

Netscape Communications Corp. foresaw this problem early on and devised a method by which small pieces of information could be stored by the web server on the web client's machine. This information would, in turn, be sent to the server each time the client requested a page from the same area from which she received the information. That little bit of information is at the root of Netscape's Persistent Client State Mechanism or "cookies," as they are known. (It's ...