cookie-parser

What is cookie-parser?

The cookie-parser npm package is a middleware which parses cookies attached to the client request object. It can parse signed cookies with a secret and populate req.cookies with an object keyed by cookie names. It's commonly used in Express and Connect applications.

What are cookie-parser's main functionalities?

Parse Cookies

This code sets up an Express server that uses cookie-parser to parse cookies from the request. It logs the cookies to the console on a GET request to the root path.

const express = require('express');
const cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');

const app = express();
app.use(cookieParser());

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log('Cookies: ', req.cookies);
  res.send('Check the console for cookies');
});

app.listen(3000);

Parse Signed Cookies

This code demonstrates how to use cookie-parser to parse signed cookies. The secret provided to cookieParser() is used to validate the signed cookies, which are then available in req.signedCookies.

const express = require('express');
const cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');

const app = express();
app.use(cookieParser('yourSecret')); // Replace 'yourSecret' with your actual secret string

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log('Signed Cookies: ', req.signedCookies);
  res.send('Check the console for signed cookies');
});

app.listen(3000);

Other packages similar to cookie-parser

express-session

While not exclusively for cookie parsing, express-session is a session management middleware that can handle cookies. It provides more features for managing user sessions, such as storing session data on the server and using a session store that is compatible with Express.

tough-cookie

tough-cookie is a more low-level package for handling cookies in Node.js. It can parse and serialize cookies, and it's designed to be a robust server-side cookie library. It does not integrate with Express/Connect middleware out of the box and requires more manual handling compared to cookie-parser.

cookies

The cookies package is another alternative for handling cookies in Node.js. It provides a higher-level abstraction than tough-cookie and includes features for setting, getting, and managing HTTP cookies. It's similar to cookie-parser but offers a different API and additional capabilities for cookie management.

README

cookie-parser

Parse Cookie header and populate req.cookies with an object keyed by the cookie names. Optionally you may enabled signed cookie support by passing a secret string, which assigns req.secret so it may be used by other middleware.

var cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');

connect()
 .use(cookieParser('optional secret string'))
 .use(function(req, res, next){
   res.end(JSON.stringify(req.cookies));
 })

install

npm install cookie-parser

License

MIT