Re: lynx-dev thoughts on cookie file w/multiple sessions

[Lloyd G. Rasmussen]

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:27:01 -0800 (PST), 
brian j. pardy  <address@hidden> wrote:

>On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Klaus Weide wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, brian j. pardy wrote:
>> 
>> > With the way I have things up there, whichever copy of Lynx is exited first
>> > will be the session with the cookie that is saved.
>> > 
>> > So it's pretty much an even shot either way. I don't like this, and can't
>> > really think of a way to do handle this without (for example) timestamping
>> > individual cookies (possibly with comments in the cookie file?).
>> 
>> Give each session its own cookie file, and merge them (if you wish) after
>> they are done?
>
>That can be done, probably best using temp files as is being done for 
>downloaded files.
>
>However, that still doesn't do anything for us to decide which cookie to
>keep when merging the files if we have >=2 identical domain/name/path 
>cookies with different values.
>
>Example:
>
>Session1 has a cookie with 'uid=foo' name=value pair in it.
>Session2 has a cookie with 'uid=foo' name=value pair.
>
>Session2 goes to the site that sent the uid=bar cookie, and uses their
>'logout' function, which nulls out the cookie (thus deleting it), and
>then the user logs in again as a different user, causing the site to send
>a 'uid=bar' name=value pair.
>
>So now, upon each session's exit, they will write differing cookies to
>their individual cookie files. How to reconcile which one is worth keeping
>when merging them?

If a single user runs multiple simultaneous Lynx sessions, he/she 
deserves to have the cookies mixed up, but only in his/her workspace.  
If multiple users are running one copy of Lynx, their cookies should 
be kept separate.  If they are going to be persistent cookies, they 
should be persistently separate, one file per user, I would think.  If 
this is an anonymous site, persistent cookies are probably a bad idea, 
but the nonpersistent variety would still be useful.  That's my two 
cents.

-- Lloyd Rasmussen
Senior Staff Engineer, Engineering Section
National Library Service for the  Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress          202-707-0535
(work)       address@hidden    http://www.loc.gov/nls/
(home) address@hidden http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/lras/