Using brackets in cookie names (Rails)

Question

When attempting to write/read cookies that have brackets in the name, it seems like Rails can't handle this. For example:

cookies["example[]"] = "value"

This causes the cookie name to be "example%5B%5D" instead of "example[]". Similarly, if I already have a cookie set with the name "example[]", then it seems like Rails is unable to properly delete it via a call cookies.delete "example[]" since the [ and ] characters are being encoded.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Simple solution... don't use brackets in cookie names. – Fosco Jul 09 '10 at 19:14 — Fosco, Jul 09 '10 at 19:14
Does string escaping work? E.g. "example\\[\\]" ? – Karl Jul 09 '10 at 22:10 — Karl, Jul 09 '10 at 22:10
@Karl - unfortunately not. :( – Matt Huggins Aug 17 '10 at 16:49 — Matt Huggins, Aug 17 '10 at 16:49

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 09 '10 at 19:33

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Th rfc does not specify what all can be in the name of a cookie . All it says that the name needs to be text . I guess rails is encoding the text and hence the brackets are becoming %5B%5D . I think its best to avoid such characters in Cookies .

answered Jul 09 '10 at 19:33

NM.

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

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Looks like this can only be done by hacking the Rails core. Sucks that the Rails developers implemented it this way.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

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answered Sep 15 '10 at 19:52

Matt Huggins

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Using brackets in cookie names (Rails)

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