How to detect cookie enabled in Safari 4 Beta

Question

Safari 4 Beta on Windows (build 528.17) has a bug. If expires is in value assigned to document.cookie, cookie is not changed. So, below cookie enable detection doesn't work anymore.

var dt = new Date();
dt.setSeconds(dt.getSeconds() + 2);

document.cookie = "cookietest=1; expires=" + dt.toGMTString();
var cookiesEnabled = document.cookie.indexOf("cookietest=") != -1;

If I just remove the expires, it works. However, it will leave a dummy cookie "cookietest=1" in the whole session.

I tried to operate in document.cookie directly to remove the cookie, but it seems there is no way to do that. The only way to "remove" a cookie is to set it expire.

Is there any workaround for this?

UPDATE: There is a bug in Safari 4 Beta for windows. if the expires is no more than 1 hour (3600 seconds) since now, assigning document.cookie would fails.

We can remove the cookie after detection.

var dt = new Date();
dt.setSeconds(dt.getSeconds() + 2);

document.cookie = "cookietest=1";
var cookiesEnabled = document.cookie.indexOf("cookietest=") != -1;

document.cookie = "cookietest=1; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT";

Answer 1

Hi Morgan,

i. The error has nothing to do with safari build. The problem is with the date that you are setting. When you use dt.SetSeconds(dt.getSeconds()+2), you are setting the cookie expires time to currenttime+2 seconds. So by the time you load the page and check the cookie the cookie expires.

ii. Increase the time to more than a minute (60) and check, it will work.

Ramjee

Answer 2

It's true - there's a problem with "shortlived" cookies on Safari (on Windows at least) If the cookie is set to expire in less than 60 minutes - it expires immediately.