jQuery Cookie Plugin

I’ve been using the jquery cookie plugin created an age ago by Klaus Hartl (stilbuero.de) but it looks like his site is down? It’s a very easy to use plugin – not all that complicated but I thought I’d post our couple of most basic uses here since we had to use it recently and I couldn’t find the demos:

Pre-reqs – load jquery first and then the cookie plugin:

<script src="PATH-TO-JQUERY/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script>
<script src="PATH-TO-JQUERY/jquery.cookie.js"></script>

Most used – example for a one time user notification via js…

var MESSAGE_COOKIE_NAME = 'sawMessage';	// code for the cookie name
$(document).ready(function(){
	var sawMessage = false;
	if (typeof $.cookie != 'undefined'){
		sawMessage = ($.cookie(MESSAGE_COOKIE_NAME) == '1');
	}
	if (!sawMessage){
		$.cookie(MESSAGE_COOKIE_NAME, '1', {
			path: '/',
			domain: 'mydomain.com',
			expires: 365 });	// expires in one year
		// code to show the message
	}
}

Used less often – a cookie for just 1 session:

if (typeof $.cookie != 'undefined'){
  // set it
  $.cookie('one-session-cookie', 'yes');
  // read it
  if ($.cookie('one-session-cookie') == 'yes'){
    alert('the cookie was set');
  }
}