Get and Set a Single Cookie with Node.js HTTP Server

Question

I want to be able to set a single cookie, and read that single cookie with each request made to the nodejs server instance. Can it be done in a few lines of code, without the need to pull in a third party lib?

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
  response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  response.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(8124);

console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124/');

Just trying to take the above code directly from nodejs.org, and work a cookie into it.

Answer 1

There is no quick function access to getting/setting cookies, so I came up with the following hack:

var http = require('http');

function parseCookies (request) {
    var list = {},
        rc = request.headers.cookie;

    rc && rc.split(';').forEach(function( cookie ) {
        var parts = cookie.split('=');
        list[parts.shift().trim()] = decodeURI(parts.join('='));
    });

    return list;
}


http.createServer(function (request, response) {

  // To Read a Cookie
  var cookies = parseCookies(request);

  // To Write a Cookie
  response.writeHead(200, {
    'Set-Cookie': 'mycookie=test',
    'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
  });
  response.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(8124);

console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124/');

This will store all cookies into the cookies object, and you need to set cookies when you write the head.