$.cookie() should return an object of all the cookie names and values

[sunjay]

$.cookie() should return an object of all the cookie names and values

[cdeszaq]

I ran across this article which links to an "improved version" of the plugin that adds multiple cookie functionality. http://jquery-howto.blogspot.com/2010/09/jquery-cookies-getsetdelete-plugin.html#jQuery-Cookie-plugin

[sunjay]

My issue deals with more of getting all the cookie values. Say for example if the user didn't know which cookies he or she wanted, or if he or she just wanted to inspect all of them.

[sunjay]

Whoops! Sorry, I accidentally closed the issue.

[carhartl]

Still struggling to find a real use case for this. If you need to know whether a cookie exists or not you can just check

$.cookie('foo') === null

[oomlaut]

@sunjay03 "Say for example if the user didn't know which cookies he or she wanted, or if he or she just wanted to inspect all of them."
In Chrome, for example, in the Resources tab of the inspection panel there is an expandable heading for Cookies, where you can view all the cookie data associated with the current domain. Does this address the issue you mention?

[sunjay]

Here is a real example:
You are writing a script which deals with saving page settings for the user. Instead of writing a million lines of code to find each setting individually, you decide to save each setting with a certain prefix:

var PREFIX = "p_setting_";
// example: save each setting individually (where the values would be found through the user's input or something
$.cookie(PREFIX+"background-color", "blue");
$.cookie(PREFIX+"background-image", "someimage.png");
$.cookie(PREFIX+"font-family", "Verdana");
// etc.

// if $.cookie() supported returning an object with all the names and values, it would be easy to load the settings back into the page.

$.each($.cookie(), function(setting, value) {
    if (setting.substr(0, PREFIX.length) === PREFIX) {
        $('body').css(setting.substr(PREFIX.length), value);
    }
});

// Where as the alternative:
$('body').css("background-color", $.cookie(PREFIX+"background-color"));
$('body').css("background-image", $.cookie(PREFIX+"background-image"));
$('body').css("font-family", $.cookie(PREFIX+"font-family"));
// etc.

// This example may not look very hard, but as the number of settings get larger, this method would get very tedious. 

This use case demonstrates the power of adding the functionality of having either an object or a multidimensional array returned as the result of an empty $.cookie() call. It would allow for quick iteration of all values and in cases like this, more optimized code.

[sunjay]

I don't know why it keeps closing the issue. Sorry about that.

[pboling]

@sunjay03: there are two forks which do this. benz303 did the work, and I merged his $.cookie() work in with another bug fix from sidereel. If you want to checkout my fork: https://github.com/pboling/jquery-cookie

[Krinkle]

Another use case is clearing of cookies. One may want to have some kind of killer function that deletes all cookies (or at least all with a certain prefix)

[johan]

This batch read, and the corresponding batch write:
$.cookie({ "object": "with", "cookies": "to", "set": "or", "delete": null });
...are implemented in pull request #123

[muxa]

I've implemented a version of this (https://github.com/muxa/jquery-cookie) - $.cookie() returns an array of cookie names. Pull request pending (#129).
Update: tests added

[carhartl]

I believe the use case @sunjay03 brought up is now fulfillable with the newly added json support, and I believe in a technically superior way even (just keep all of the belonging properties in a single object that gets serialized to the cookie).

Regarding the "clear all cookies" use case I'm probably going to merge @muxa's PR (#129).

[carhartl]

c32ed09