In other words, cookies are nothing but a user’s identity and used to track where the user navigated throughout the pages of the website. The purpose of a cookie is to make rapid interaction between users and websites. Applications, where cookies can be used, is to implement a shopping cart, personalized web experience, user tracking, marketing, user sessions etc. In this tutorial, we will learn:

What is the Content of Cookie? Types of Cookies Where Cookies are stored? How to Test Cookies in Website Plugins to Test Cookies Cookie Modification in Action Difference between Cookie and Session

What is the Content of Cookie?

The cookie consists of mainly three things:

The name of the server the cookie was sent from Cookies Lifetime A value. This is usually a randomly generated unique number

Where Cookies are stored?

When any web page application writes a cookie, it is stored in a text file on user hard disk drive. The path where the cookies are saved depends on the browser. Different browsers store cookie in different paths. Usually, there are two types of cookies written on user machines:

Session Cookies: These cookies are active till the browser that triggers the cookie is open. When we close the browser this session cookie gets deleted

Persistent Cookies: These cookies are written permanently on the user machine and it lasts for months or years

For example, in Mozilla Firefox browser you can see the cookies in browser options. To view this click on Tools -> Options -> Privacy and then click on “Remove Individual Cookies”.

While in Internet Explorer browser it stores cookies on path “C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Cookies”

Modern browsers allow viewing/editing of the cookies in the browser itself. There are cookie tester plugins in Mozilla and Google Chrome both. Step 1) Disabling cookies Disable all cookies and attempt to use the site’s major functions Step 2) Corrupting cookies Manually edit the cookie in notepad and change the parameters with some random values Step 3) Cookies encryption Sensitive information like passwords and usernames should be encrypted before it is sent to our computer Step 4) Cookie testing with multiple browsers Check your website page is writing the cookies properly on a different browser as expected Step 5) Checking the deletion from your web application page Check whether the cookies are deleted from your web application or not Step 6) Selectively rejecting cookies Delete all the cookies for the websites and see how the website reacts to it Step 7) Access to cookies Cookies written by one website should not be accessible by others Step 8) No overuse of cookies If the application under test is a public website, there should not be overuse of cookies Step 9) Testing with the different setting Testing should be done properly to check that website is working well with different cookie setting Step 10) Categorize cookies separately Cookies should not be kept in the same category of the viruses, spam or spyware

Following are the steps to modify or edit the cookie using plugin for Chrome: Step 1) Enter the userID & password to login into the http://demo.guru99.com/V4/

Step 2) Click on the plugin icon and it will open another window as shown below

Step 3) Change the value of the cookie to “guru99” and then click on to save the changes

Here is the main difference between Cookie and Session:

Summary

A Cookie is a small piece of information that is stored in a text file on user’s (client) hard drive by the web server. Cookie Testing is defined as a Software Testing type that checks Cookie created in your web browser. The Cookie consists of mainly three things: Name of the server the cookie was sent from, Cookies Lifetime, and a value Types of Cookies: 1) Session Cookies, 2) Persistent Cookies When any web page application writes a cookie, it is stored in a text file on user hard disk drive. The path where the cookies are saved depends on the browser. Different browsers store cookie in different paths.