Cookie getMaxAge

Question

Hello I can't retrieve cookie maxage it always returns -1

Creating cookie:

Cookie securityCookie = new Cookie("sec", "somevalue");
securityCookie.setMaxAge(EXPIRATION_TIME);

Retrieve cookie:

Cookie[] cookies = request.getCookies();
if (cookies != null) {
    for(int i=0; i<cookies.length; i++) {
     Cookie cookie = cookies[i];
        if ("sec".equals(cookie.getName())){
      int age = cookie.getMaxAge();
        }
    }
}

i am always getting age = -1

also when i check in firefox cookie expiration i see strange date.

Thx

Answer 1

The API says that -1 means until browser is running:

Returns the maximum age of the cookie, specified in seconds, By default, -1 indicating the cookie will persist until browser shutdown

What is the value of EXPIRATION_TIME constant?

Answer 2

The value may be modified by the browser.

You create a cookie and want to set a max age. The cookie is sent to the browser. The browser may reject the cookie or ignore a max age too long for its policy. This modified cookie is sent back to your application.

Check your browser settings.

Answer 3

Just for grins, can you retrieve the value of the cookie from the browser using javascript ?

Also, can you put a filter before your servlet/jsp so that you can check the value of the cookie after the servlet/jsp sets it ?

Answer 4

When a browser sends a cookie back to the origin server, it doesn't include any age. So it is logical that your "retrieve" code above does not receive a max age: it is not included in the request.

When the cookie is received from the server, the browser uses the max age parameter to determine how long the cookie should be kept; the age is never communicated back to the server, an expired cookie is simply discarded. When processing a request, if you want to renew the age of the cookie, reinclude the cookie in the response.

Also see the section "Sending Cookies to the Origin Server" in the RFC.