HTTP State Management Mechanism
RFC 6265
| Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(April 2011; Errata)
Obsoletes RFC 2965
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 6265 (Proposed Standard) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Peter Saint-Andre | ||
| IESG note | Jeff Hodges (chair of the HTTPSTATE WG) is the document shepherd. | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Barth
Request for Comments: 6265 U.C. Berkeley
Obsoletes: 2965 April 2011
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721
HTTP State Management Mechanism
Abstract
This document defines the HTTP Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields.
These header fields can be used by HTTP servers to store state
(called cookies) at HTTP user agents, letting the servers maintain a
stateful session over the mostly stateless HTTP protocol. Although
cookies have many historical infelicities that degrade their security
and privacy, the Cookie and Set-Cookie header fields are widely used
on the Internet. This document obsoletes RFC 2965.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6265.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Barth Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 6265 HTTP State Management Mechanism April 2011
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published or made publicly available before November
10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
than English.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3
2. Conventions .....................................................4
2.1. Conformance Criteria .......................................4
2.2. Syntax Notation ............................................5
2.3. Terminology ................................................5
3. Overview ........................................................6
3.1. Examples ...................................................6
4. Server Requirements .............................................8
4.1. Set-Cookie .................................................8
4.1.1. Syntax ..............................................8
4.1.2. Semantics (Non-Normative) ..........................10
4.2. Cookie ....................................................13
4.2.1. Syntax .............................................13
4.2.2. Semantics ..........................................13
5. User Agent Requirements ........................................14
5.1. Subcomponent Algorithms ...................................14
5.1.1. Dates ..............................................14
5.1.2. Canonicalized Host Names ...........................16
5.1.3. Domain Matching ....................................16
5.1.4. Paths and Path-Match ...............................16
5.2. The Set-Cookie Header .....................................17
5.2.1. The Expires Attribute ..............................19
5.2.2. The Max-Age Attribute ..............................20
5.2.3. The Domain Attribute ...............................20
5.2.4. The Path Attribute .................................21
5.2.5. The Secure Attribute ...............................21
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