And that's about it for this tutorial. Over the last few pages, I gave you a crash course in reading and writing cookies using JavaScript. I explained what cookies were, dissected the innards of a cookie and showed you what they contain, and then took you through the process of reading and writing a cookie with the document.cookie property, and with the Bill Dortch cookie library. Finally, I wrapped things up with an example of how you could use cookies in a real-world environment, to personalize a Web site for your users by automatically selecting their favourite language for them.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can do a lot more with cookies; take a look at the following links for more information:

The Netscape cookie specification, at http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html

Bill Dortch's cookie library, at
http://www.webwoman.biz/articles/Cookies/cookie.txt

JavaScript cookie applications, at
http://javascript.internet.com/cookies/

More sample cookie applications, at
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dcrombie/cookie.html and
http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/archive/goodman_cookies.html

Detecting cookie support in the client, at
http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/cookiedetect.shtml

Sample cookie code and demos, at http://www.cookiecentral.com/

Until next time, be good!

Note: Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment. Melonfire provides no warranties or support for the source code described in this article.