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NAME
    HTTP::Cookies - HTTP cookie jars

SYNOPSIS
      use HTTP::Cookies;
      $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new(
        file => "$ENV{'HOME'}/lwp_cookies.dat",
        autosave => 1,
      );

      use LWP;
      my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
      $browser->cookie_jar($cookie_jar);

    Or for an empty and temporary cookie jar:

      use LWP;
      my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new;
      $browser->cookie_jar( {} );

DESCRIPTION
    This class is for objects that represent a "cookie jar" -- that is, a
    database of all the HTTP cookies that a given LWP::UserAgent object
    knows about.

    Cookies are a general mechanism which server side connections can use to
    both store and retrieve information on the client side of the
    connection. For more information about cookies refer to
    <URL:http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/cookie_spec.html> and
    <URL:http://www.cookiecentral.com/>. This module also implements the new
    style cookies described in *RFC 2965*. The two variants of cookies are
    supposed to be able to coexist happily.

    Instances of the class *HTTP::Cookies* are able to store a collection of
    Set-Cookie2: and Set-Cookie: headers and are able to use this
    information to initialize Cookie-headers in *HTTP::Request* objects. The
    state of a *HTTP::Cookies* object can be saved in and restored from
    files.

METHODS
    The following methods are provided:

    $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new
        The constructor takes hash style parameters. The following
        parameters are recognized:

          file:            name of the file to restore cookies from and save cookies to
          autosave:        save during destruction (bool)
          ignore_discard:  save even cookies that are requested to be discarded (bool)
          hide_cookie2:    do not add Cookie2 header to requests

        Future parameters might include (not yet implemented):

          max_cookies               300
          max_cookies_per_domain    20
          max_cookie_size           4096

          no_cookies   list of domain names that we never return cookies to

    $cookie_jar->add_cookie_header( $request )
        The add_cookie_header() method will set the appropriate
        Cookie:-header for the *HTTP::Request* object given as argument. The
        $request must have a valid url attribute before this method is
        called.

    $cookie_jar->extract_cookies( $response )
        The extract_cookies() method will look for Set-Cookie: and
        Set-Cookie2: headers in the *HTTP::Response* object passed as
        argument. Any of these headers that are found are used to update the
        state of the $cookie_jar.

    $cookie_jar->set_cookie( $version, $key, $val, $path, $domain, $port,
    $path_spec, $secure, $maxage, $discard, \%rest )
        The set_cookie() method updates the state of the $cookie_jar. The
        $key, $val, $domain, $port and $path arguments are strings. The
        $path_spec, $secure, $discard arguments are boolean values. The
        $maxage value is a number indicating number of seconds that this
        cookie will live. A value <= 0 will delete this cookie. %rest
        defines various other attributes like "Comment" and "CommentURL".

    $cookie_jar->save
    $cookie_jar->save( $file )
        This method file saves the state of the $cookie_jar to a file. The
        state can then be restored later using the load() method. If a
        filename is not specified we will use the name specified during
        construction. If the attribute *ignore_discard* is set, then we will
        even save cookies that are marked to be discarded.

        The default is to save a sequence of "Set-Cookie3" lines.
        "Set-Cookie3" is a proprietary LWP format, not known to be
        compatible with any browser. The *HTTP::Cookies::Netscape* sub-class
        can be used to save in a format compatible with Netscape.

    $cookie_jar->load
    $cookie_jar->load( $file )
        This method reads the cookies from the file and adds them to the
        $cookie_jar. The file must be in the format written by the save()
        method.

    $cookie_jar->revert
        This method empties the $cookie_jar and re-loads the $cookie_jar
        from the last save file.

    $cookie_jar->clear
    $cookie_jar->clear( $domain )
    $cookie_jar->clear( $domain, $path )
    $cookie_jar->clear( $domain, $path, $key )
        Invoking this method without arguments will empty the whole
        $cookie_jar. If given a single argument only cookies belonging to
        that domain will be removed. If given two arguments, cookies
        belonging to the specified path within that domain are removed. If
        given three arguments, then the cookie with the specified key, path
        and domain is removed.

    $cookie_jar->clear_temporary_cookies
        Discard all temporary cookies. Scans for all cookies in the jar with
        either no expire field or a true `discard' flag. To be called when
        the user agent shuts down according to RFC 2965.

    $cookie_jar->scan( \&callback )
        The argument is a subroutine that will be invoked for each cookie
        stored in the $cookie_jar. The subroutine will be invoked with the
        following arguments:

          0  version
          1  key
          2  val
          3  path
          4  domain
          5  port
          6  path_spec
          7  secure
          8  expires
          9  discard
         10  hash

    $cookie_jar->as_string
    $cookie_jar->as_string( $skip_discardables )
        The as_string() method will return the state of the $cookie_jar
        represented as a sequence of "Set-Cookie3" header lines separated by
        "\n". If $skip_discardables is TRUE, it will not return lines for
        cookies with the *Discard* attribute.

SEE ALSO
    HTTP::Cookies::Netscape, HTTP::Cookies::Microsoft

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright 1997-2002 Gisle Aas

    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.