HTTP-COOKIES: added cookie documentation

2 files changed, 106 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/docs/HTTP-COOKIES b/docs/HTTP-COOKIES
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..660c0b3d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/HTTP-COOKIES
@@ -0,0 +1,104 @@
+                                  HTTP Cookies
+
+Overview
+========
+
+HTTP cookies are pieces of 'name=contents' snippets that a server tells the
+client to hold and then the client sends back those the server on subsequent
+requests to the same domains/paths for which the cookies were set.
+
+Cookies are either "session cookies" which typically are forgotten when the
+session is over which is often translated to equal when browser quits, or the
+cookies aren't session cookies they have expiration dates after which the
+client will throw them away.
+
+Cookies are set to the client with the Set-Cookie: header and are sent to
+servers with the Cookie: header.
+
+For a very long time, the only spec explaining how to use cookies was the
+original Netscape spec from 1994: http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/cookie_spec.html
+
+In 2011, RFC6265 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc6265.txt) was finally published
+and details how cookies work within HTTP.
+
+cookies saved to disk
+=====================
+
+Netscape once created a file format for storing cookies on disk so that they
+would survive browser restarts. curl adopted that file format to allow sharing
+the cookies with browsers, only to see browsers move away from that
+format. Modern browsers no longer use it, while curl still does.
+
+The cookie file format stores one cookie per physical line in the file with a
+bunch of associated meta data, each field separated with TAB. That file is
+called the cookiejar in curl terminology.
+
+cookies with curl the command line tool
+=======================================
+
+curl has a full cookie "engine" built in. If you just activate it, you can
+have curl receive and send cookies exactly as mandated in the specs.
+
+Command line options:
+
+  -b, --cookie
+
+    tell curl a file to read cookies from and start the cookie engine, or if
+    it isn't a file it will pass on the given string. -b name=var works and so
+    does -b cookiefile.
+
+  -j, --junk-session-cookies
+
+    when used in combination with -b, it will skip all "session cookies" on
+    load so as to appear to start a new cookie session.
+
+  -c, --cookie-jar
+
+    tell curl to start the cookie engine and write cookies to the given file
+    after the request(s)
+
+cookies with libcurl
+====================
+
+libcurl options:
+
+  CURLOPT_COOKIE
+
+    Is used when you want to specify the exact contents of a cookie header to
+    send to the server.
+
+  CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE
+
+    Tell libcurl to activate the cookie engine, and to read the initial set of
+    cookies from the given file. Read-only.
+
+  CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR
+
+    Tell libcurl to activate the cookie engine, and when the easy handle is
+    closed save all known cookies to the given cookiejar file. Write-only.
+
+  CURLOPT_COOKIELIST
+
+    Provide detailed information about a single cookie to add to the internal
+    storage of cookies. Pass in the cookie as a HTTP header with all the
+    details set, or pass in a line from a netscape cookie file. This option
+    can also be used to flush the cookies etc.
+    
+  CURLINFO_COOKIELIST
+
+    Extract cookie information from the internal cookie storage as a linked
+    list.
+
+cookies with javascript
+=======================
+
+These days a lot of the web is built up by javascript. The webbrowser loads
+complete programs that render the page you see. These javascript programs can
+also set and access cookies.
+
+Since curl and libcurl are plain HTTP clients without any knowledge of or
+capability to handle javascript, such cookies will not be detected or used.
+
+Often, if you want to mimic what a browser does on such web sites, you can
+record web browser HTTP traffic when using such a site and then repeat the
+cookie operations using curl or libcurl.
diff --git a/docs/Makefile.am b/docs/Makefile.am
index 9edf05fde..0701ba823 100644
--- a/docs/Makefile.am
+++ b/docs/Makefile.am
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 #                            | (__| |_| |  _ <| |___
 #                             \___|\___/|_| \_\_____|
 #
-# Copyright (C) 1998 - 2011, Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.
+# Copyright (C) 1998 - 2012, Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.
 #
 # This software is licensed as described in the file COPYING, which
 # you should have received as part of this distribution. The terms
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ EXTRA_DIST = MANUAL BUGS CONTRIBUTE FAQ FEATURES INTERNALS SSLCERTS	 \
  README.win32 RESOURCES TODO TheArtOfHttpScripting THANKS VERSIONS	 \
  KNOWN_BUGS BINDINGS $(man_MANS) $(HTMLPAGES) HISTORY INSTALL		 \
  $(PDFPAGES) LICENSE-MIXING README.netware DISTRO-DILEMMA INSTALL.devcpp \
- MAIL-ETIQUETTE
+ MAIL-ETIQUETTE HTTP-COOKIES
 
 MAN2HTML= roffit < $< >$@