C is for cookie

Getting and setting cookies in JavaScript through the standard API (document.cookie) can be a pain to do manually, so I’m sharing a tiny, framework-independent script that provides both read and write methods with the simplest interface there can be.

// setting a cookie:
Cookie.set('SesameStreetCharacter', 'Cookie monster')

// getting a value of the cookie:
Cookie.get('SesameStreetCharacter')
// -> 'Cookie monster'

// Cookie.set() optional parameters
var date = new Date()
date.setTime(date.getTime() + (14*24*60*60*1000)) // 14 days from now

Cookie.set('expiringCookie', 'I will expire', {
  expires: date, path: '/some/path', domain: 'example.com', secure: true
})

Here’s the full code:

// C IS FOR COOKIE
var Cookie = {
  get: function(name) {
    var name = escape(name) + '='
    if (document.cookie.indexOf(name) >= 0) {
      var cookies = document.cookie.split(/\s*;\s*/)
      for (var i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++) {
        if (cookies[i].indexOf(name) == 0)
          return unescape(cookies[i].substring(name.length, cookies[i].length))
      }
    }
    return null
  },

  set: function(name, value, options) {
    var newcookie = [escape(name) + "=" + escape(value)]
    if (options) {
      if (options.expires) newcookie.push("expires=" + options.expires.toGMTString())
      if (options.path)    newcookie.push("path=" + options.path)
      if (options.domain)  newcookie.push("domain=" + options.domain)
      if (options.secure)  newcookie.push("secure")
    }
    document.cookie = newcookie.join('; ')
  }
}

And a great video to go along:

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