1351348 - Storage Inspector Cookie "Expires on" Column Should Reflect Site Settings

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: Storage Inspector, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Dane MacMillan [:danemacmillan]]

When inspecting the Cookies of a given domain, one very important attribute of the cookie is its expiry time. This is set by the site owner, and is reflected in the "Expires on" column of Firefox's Developer Tools' Storage Inspector. However, a browser that is configured to "Clear history when Firefox closes," will trump the site's cookie expiry time value in the Storage Inspector. While it is *accurate* that, unless a cookie exception for the given domain is made, the cookie's "Expires on" value is "Session," I do not think it is *correct*.

For the longest time I thought Firefox's Storage Inspector was broken. A new Firefox profile, and every other popular browser, displays the cookie "Expires on" value of my site as six months from now--as it is configured in the business logic--while my main Firefox profile would always show "Session" as the "Expires on" value. Ultimately, it led me to use other browsers while testing cookie management.

A cookie's "Expires on" value should *not* have the browser's preferences trump its own site's configuration. The Storage Inspector is for developers. The Storage Inspector should reflect the state of the application, not the state of the browser's various knobs and dials. Maintaining the latter behaviour is counterintuitive.

The issue is ultimately one of data priority. While they both convey useful information to a developer, the application's configuration should take priority over the browser's preferences. After all, we are using these tools to analyze and debug the application. The *actual* "Expires on" that a browser can manipulate based on its privacy settings, could be displayed as supplementary data, and is useful in testing cookie management settings, but if there can only be one value displayed, it should be that of the application.

Comment 1

[Mike Ratcliffe [:miker] [:mratcliffe] [:mikeratcliffe]]

In this situation Firefox is simply reflecting how "Clear history when Firefox closes" is implemented. This means that the cookie's "Expires on" value is 0 (Session) because that is how the feature has been implemented.

Comment 2

[Dane MacMillan [:danemacmillan]]

I figured it was a deliberate choice. I think there's value in a distinction between a site owner's cookie configuration, and an end-user's browser settings, though. Displaying both would provide an overview without needing to rejigger browser settings when testing code.

Comment 3

[Mike Ratcliffe [:miker] [:mratcliffe] [:mikeratcliffe]]

To fix this we will need to look at the cookie info we have... I am fairly sire that we have both (expiry === 0 and isSession === true) so maybe in this situation we can get the expiry date.

Comment 4

[Mike Ratcliffe [:miker] [:mratcliffe] [:mikeratcliffe]]

Filter on HOTFROG.