5.6. Storing State for a Stateless Server: Cookies
HTTP allows Web clients and servers to introduce new headers that are not specified in the standard, as long as these headers follow the general "keyword:value" structure. HTTP stipulates that clients and servers that do not understand the new headers should ignore them. This provision for new headers has become a great facilitator of innovation, allowing the graceful introduction of new functionalities to HTTP. The cookie mechanism [Kristol and Montulli 1997], which is not part of standard HTTP, is a prime example of such innovation. It provides an elegant mechanism to store state between Web interactions while retaining the stateless nature of HTTP servers. For example, a cookie can record ...
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