144795 - support document.cookie for all documents

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Ashish Bhatt]

document.cookie does not write the cookie when called from a xul page, It is
only available until the page is loaded. Press shift+ reload and the cookie is
not there any more. Also if you see the cookie manager while the page is loaded
and the cookie set it dosen't show the cookie.

Comment 1

[John Morrison]

Yes, there is no implementation of 'cookies' for xul content over http. Is
there a specific reason why this is (or will be) required?

Note that setting |document.cookie| in a xul document is just like setting 
|document.anypropertyname|. i.e., it is just a property of the document, and
not a "magic" property that digests and stores the cookie. For example, if 
you say document.cookie="foo=bar; expires=Thursday, 16-May-2002 23:00:00 GMT";
in an HTML document and then do 'alert(document.cookie);' the value returned is
just the name-value pair "foo=bar". In a xul document, the original string,
including expiration time, is returned

Comment 2

[Stephen P. Morse]

If you really want this, then you should mark it as a request-for-enhancement.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Is there a specific reason why this is (or will be) required?

For the same reason why you want this in HTML.

Comment 4

[poelzi]

I'm currently implementing a xul frontend for sitebar (http://sitebar.org) and
stumbeled over this bug. 
For example does sitebar save the state of open nodes and the session in a
cookie which a can't access from the xul frontend, cause its unprivileged as it
was intended to be. I think its importent that xul should not have lesser
capabilities to access data then html does, otherwise it will not be used.

Comment 5

[Sheng-Te Tsao]

I ran into this bug as well.  My JavaScript code was not working and I just could not understand why document.cookie was not returning anything.  I am really surprised that document.cookie is not supposed to work with XUL content.  Most programmer will probably find this behavior surprising and inconvenient too. 

Given that XUL is an alternative for writing rich web based applications, this is a major omission.

For now I guess I can embed a small iframe with HTML in it, but that is an ugly solution.

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Created http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Remote_XUL to list these kinds of problems.

Comment 7

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

An alternative to cookies is to use globalStorage (Firefox 2.0 and later). Given that I don't expect anyone to put in the work to make cookies functional.

Comment 8

[(no longer active)]

This wpt test is testing whether document.cookie is present on XML documents and is ignored there.

Comment 9

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #8)

This wpt test is testing whether document.cookie is present on XML documents and is ignored there.

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/testing/web-platform/meta/xhr/responsexml-document-properties.htm.ini

Comment 10

[(no longer active)]

Attachment: Bug 144795 - Move HTMLDocument.cookie getter/setter to Document;

Comment 11

[Chris Mills [:cmills]]

On MDN, we state that all browsers have it already available at Document.cookie; we should probably clarify this.

Comment 12

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ee03e8a4f6cd
Move HTMLDocument.cookie getter/setter to Document; r=bzbarsky

Comment 13

[Arthur Iakab [arthur_iakab]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ee03e8a4f6cd

Comment 14

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Documentation updates:

• A little cleanup work on the Document.cookie page
• Submitted BCD PR 4351
• Added a mention of this change to Firefox 68 for developers