Cookie.py troubles.

[John J. Lee]

Ben Hearsum <bhearsum at myrealbox.com> writes:
[...]
> I set my cookie like this:
> 
> mycookie = Cookie.SimpleCookie()
> mycookie['key'] = "foobar"
> 
> print mycookie
> print("Content-Type: text/html\n\n")
> print("meow")
> 
> Now, to retrieve it, the documentation says I parse the HTTP_COOKIE
> environment variable. Makes sense to me. But when I print it out I get
> "Set-Cookie: key=foobar;". I was thinking of parsing it with cgi.parse_qs,
> but even if i do print(mycookie.output(header="")) there's still a ; at
> the end of the cookie.

Why do you want to parse Set-Cookie if you're writing a CGI script?

Set-Cookie is what the server sends to the client.  HTTP_COOKIE is set
by the server, not by Python, to the value than was sent by the client
to the server.  I guess SimpleCookie has a __str__ method that makes
it print out Set-Cookie: key=foobar; -- seems like useful behaviour.

> Here's what I use to print them out:
> 
> cookie = Cookie.SimpleCookie()
> cookie.load(os.environ['HTTP_COOKIE'])

Yep, in comes the Cookie: header, I presume SimpleCookie parses it,
and then...


> print("Content-Type: text/html\n\n")
> print(mycookie.output(header=""))

You send the cookie back to the client again.


> Output:
> 
> key=foobar;

This seems to contradict what you said before ("key=foobar;"
vs. "Set-Cookie: key=foobar;").



John