Can I use localhost as the domain when setting an HTTP cookie?

Question

I am using a jQuery plugin to set cookies and when I use localhost for the domain it will not store the cookie.

Here is the plugin I am using with jQuery 1.2.6.

http://www.stilbuero.de/2006/09/17/cookie-plugin-for-jquery/

Below is the code that I am using. You can see it does not like localhost, and I am running it from a development web server on localhost. One detail is that I am running off port 4005 but that should not affect the domain, AFAIK.

$(function() {

    console.log('Testing');

    var one = $.cookie('Test.One');
    var two = $.cookie('Test.Two');
    var three = $.cookie('Test.Three');

    console.log(['one', one]);
    console.log(['two', two]);
    console.log(['three', three]);

    $('#div1').text(one);
    $('#div2').text(two);
    $('#div3').text(three);

    $.cookie('Test.One', 'Test 1');
    $.cookie('Test.Two', 'Test 2', { path: '/' });
    $.cookie('Test.Three', 'Test 3', { path: '/', domain: 'localhost' });

});

Answer 1

I had similar problem with setting cookies. Make up a domain name and add it to your hosts file as 127.0.0.1. Then run web application on that domain.

Answer 2

I tried setting the host file to use an alternate name (local.acme.com) and I can now set cookies on that domain. It seems I cannot set cookies on localhost, at least not with Firefox. I do not recall that being a restriction for cookies. I would like to understand what is going on here.

Also, I did try just making the domain in the hosts file simply "dev" but that did not work. I had to use a name that ended in .com or another tld to make it work.

Answer 3

I think the domain name of a cookie must have exactly two dots (not counting the final dot after the TLD). So .something.localhost is okay, .google.com is okay, but .localhost or google.com is not. But a glance at RFC 2965 suggests that it's more complicated than that... you might want to read that document, especially section 3.3 (and/or its precursor, RFC 2109).

Answer 4

I updated the jQuery plugin to not add the domain to the cookie when it is localhost. That solves my problem without touching the hosts file.

var domain = (options.domain && options.domain !== 'localhost') ? '; domain=' + (options.domain) : '';

Answer 5

I'm using Code Ignitor, and setting the domain to an empty string fixed my problem while working on the application on localhost. I believe this is the better solution as everyone in the development team then doesn't need to mess with their hosts files on Windows.

Production domain values can be put in the config.php of Code Ignitor when deployed on a live site.

Answer 6

Simplest solution for me to resolve this was to use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost ;-) That works fine in Firefox!