Cookies in python

Question

I am trying to write a script in python which uses the Cookie library to set cookies. I have written the following method:

import uuid
import Cookie
import sys
import os

def send_cookie(key, value, max_age):
    cookie = Cookie.SimpleCookie()
    cookie[key]=value
    cookie[key]['max-age']=max_age
    print cookie.output()

The problem is when I call this method multiple times for example, send_cookie('foo',123,1000), send_cookie('foo2',12345,1000). I would 'assume' that these cookies are stored onto my computer. When I print the os.environ['HTTP_COOKIE'], I dont't see any of the cookies I set in there.

Answer 1

No, the Cookie module only helps you model the abstract concept of a cookie, and perhaps generate Set-Cookie headers. An additional module cookielib can handle collections of cookies, but neither will set a HTTP_COOKIE environment header.

The documentation is quite clear on this:

The Cookie module defines classes for abstracting the concept of cookies, an HTTP state management mechanism. It supports both simple string-only cookies, and provides an abstraction for having any serializable data-type as cookie value.

The HTTP_COOKIE environment variable is something a CGI server would set based on an incoming HTTP request. You certainly could generate such an environment variable from the Cookie object, but the act of creating such an object does not affect the environment on its own.

If you are actually using this function in a CGI script, then the cookie.output() should be part of the HTTP headers; make sure you haven't already sent the double line separator signalling to the CGI server that your headers are done.