Retrieve the Cookie¶

The returned cookie will be available as a string in the os.environ dictionary with the HTTP_COOKIE key:

cookie_string = os.environ.get('HTTP_COOKIE')

The Cookie.BaseCookie.load() method inherited by the Cookie.SimpleCookie class will parse that string rebuilding the object’s mapping:

cookie.load(cookie_string)

Complete code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import Cookie, os, time

cookie = Cookie.SimpleCookie()
cookie['lastvisit'] = str(time.time())

print cookie
print 'Content-Type: text/html\n'

print '<html><body>'
print '<p>Server time is', time.asctime(time.localtime()), '</p>'

# The returned cookie is available in the os.environ dictionary
cookie_string = os.environ.get('HTTP_COOKIE')

# The first time the page is run there will be no cookies
if not cookie_string:
    print '<p>First visit or cookies disabled</p>'

else: # Run the page twice to retrieve the cookie
    print '<p>The returned cookie string was "' + cookie_string + '"</p>'

    # load() parses the cookie string
    cookie.load(cookie_string)
    # Use the value attribute of the cookie to get it
    lastvisit = float(cookie['lastvisit'].value)

    print '<p>Your last visit was at',
    print time.asctime(time.localtime(lastvisit)), '</p>'

print '</body></html>'

When the client first loads the page there will be no cookie in the client’s computer to be returned. The second time the page is requested then the cookie saved in the last run will be sent to the server.