Change Cookie expiry date - HTTP

Question

I need to change the expiry date of a Cookie that I occasionally set.

More precisely I would like to refresh the expiry date to +1 hour.

This is how I set the cookie

Set-Cookie: test=123; Expires=Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Setting the cookie again adds another cookie with the same name :S

Any ideas?

That's not how you set the cookie - what code are you actually using to do it? — Daniel Roseman, Feb 01 '11 at 14:47
@Daniel: need to set a cookie with expiry date, and then refresh the expiry date when needed. `I'm using the expiry date as a timeout.` — RadiantHex, Feb 01 '11 at 14:49
What does that mean? What bit of Python did you use to set the above cookie? — Daniel Roseman, Feb 01 '11 at 14:57

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 01 '11 at 15:01

3

You can only overwrite a cookie if you use the same parameters (i.e. Domain, Path, Secure, and HTTPOnly).

So to overwrite your current cookie, you need to set it from the same domain and path.

answered Feb 01 '11 at 15:01

Gumbo

Does the path really need to be exactly the same? – RadiantHex Feb 01 '11 at 15:11
@RadiantHex: Yes, at least the resulting path needs to be the same: “Instances of the same path and name will overwrite each other, with the latest instance taking precedence.” – Gumbo Feb 01 '11 at 15:15

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 02 '15 at 16:08

1

If the match is present and unique, this works to set expiration to end of session:

document.cookie="meteor_login_token="+/meteor_login_token=([^;]*)/.exec(document.cookie)[1]+";path=/"

answered Dec 02 '15 at 16:08

Cees Timmerman

For anyone who doesn't follow the code, here is a simpler example to change the expiration from 20000 seconds after the cookie was first set to 1000 seconds from the new time it is set, ie, to change the expiration time of an existing cookie: [original:] document.cookie= "blah=foobar; max-age=20000; path=/somepath" ...[and to reset the date later:] document.cookie= "blah=foobar; max-age=1000; path=/somepath" ... In the code above, no max-age was added so that makes the cookie a session cookie, but it retains the old value (and is invoked via old name and old path). – Jose_X Mar 09 '21 at 16:28

2 Answers2