Mini Cookies 🍪

A mini JS Document.cookie manager to help you write your cookies right! 🎯

Use (or try) it in your *browser's console right now!

eval(await (await fetch('https://unpkg.com/mini-cookies@latest/dist/mini-cookies.umd.js')).text())
const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!');
cookies.get('mini'); // cookies!

*Evaling won't work on sites that don't allow theunpkg domain.

Why Mini Cookies?

Mini Cookie's API is very small. It's size is also very small. Even though Mini Cookies is super small, it's built to make using document.cookie's API easy!

How?

1. It smartly assists in contructing document.cookie attributes.
2. And, it store's your document.cookie state so you can access/review your document.cookie's state later—including attributes!

Install

npm install mini-cookies --save
# pnpm/yarn add mini-cookies --save

Use

Basic usage

import miniCookies from 'mini-cookies';

const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!');
cookies.get('mini'); // 'cookies!!!'
cookies.remove('mini'); // no cookie!!! 😫

With Mini Cookie state management

import miniCookies from 'mini-cookies';

const cookies = miniCookies({ hasState: true });
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!');
cookies.get('mini'); // 'cookies!!!'
cookies.review(); // mini-cookies-🍪: { mini: { value: 'cookies!!!' } }
cookies.remove('mini'); // no cookie!!! 😫

With debugging

import miniCookies from 'mini-cookies';

const cookies = miniCookies({ hasState: true, debug: true });
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!');
cookies.get('mini'); // 'cookies!!!' + logs
cookies.review(); // mini-cookies-🍪: { mini: { value: 'cookies!!!' } }
cookies.remove('mini'); // no cookie!!! 😫 + logs

API

miniCookies({options})

{options} an object argument of Mini Cookies options.

• {hasState: boolean}: Whether or not to enable Mini Cookie state management.
• {debug: boolean}: Whether or not to enable debugging.
• *{id: string}: The unique identifier for each mini-cookie instance.

* id: unique identifier for each mini-cookie instance

The unique identifier is important to consider when considering mini-cookie state management. It provides a way to identify unique mini-cookie instances. If you're dealing with a scenerio where you have multiple mini-cookie instances, insuring you have a unique id for your mini-cookie instance is required for accurate mini-cookie state management.

miniCookies({options}).set(<key>, <value>), {attributes})

Set a cookie.

params

• <key>: a string
• <value>: a string
• {attributes}: an object of cookie attributes.

miniCookies({options}).get(<key>)

Gets a cookie by string.

param

• <key>: a string

miniCookies({options}).remove(<key>)

Removes a cookie by string.

param

• <key>: a string

miniCookies({options}).review()

Returns mini-cookie state.

*hasState must be enabled for this to work!

miniCookies({options}).clearState()

Clears mini-cookie state.

*hasState must be enabled for this to work!

Smartly Assist Constructing Cookies

The ability to smartly assist in constructing cookie attributes and store cookie state is awesome because document.cookie cookies can't be updated (only overwritten) and document.cookie cookies attributes can't be read (only written). With Mini Cookies, document.cookie state is accessible and writing the document.cookie you want is easy. More to diagrams and such on this to come!

Opt-in Cookie State Management

You don't need to use Mini Cookies state! It is opt-in only! This is good for your app's maintainability. The recommended pattern is using Mini Cookies state management to get your document.cookie's working how you want and then turning off Mini Cookies State Management when your cookies are working how you want. More state diagrams and such to come!

Recipes

Mini Cookies is built form ease of use. It provides ways to keep track of the Cookie attributes and the state of the Cookies you set. Furthermore, Cookie attributes can be confusing. Using simplified convenience attributes, "smart attributes", making the right attribute decisions is just a bit easier.

Smart attributes

Mini Cookies provides smart attributes which are built to be intuitive to how we generally set cookies.

days

days creates an expires cookie attribute.

By adding the days attribute, you can set the expires attribute to the number of days from now vs having to think about dates, etc.

// set expires to 1 day useing `days`
const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!', { days: 1 });

If you want to explicitly set the expires attribute, you can still use expires attribute.

// set expires manually
const timeToAdd = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 * 4 * 6;
const date = new Date();
const expiryTime = `${parseInt(date.getTime())}${timeToAdd}`;
date.setTime(expiryTime);
const expires = date.toUTCString();
const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!', { expires });

isSecure

isSecure creates secure, __Secure-, and samesite=strict cookie attributes.

// set isSecure
const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!', { isSecure: true });

If you want to explicitly set secure cookie attributes, you can still provide the following attributes.

// set secure attributes manually
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!', { secure: true, __Secure__: true, samesite: 'strict' });

isStrictSecure

isStrictSecure creates secure, __Secure-, __Host-, path=/ and samesite=strict cookie attributes.

// set isStrictSecure
const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!', { isStrictSecure: true });

If you want to explicitly set secure cookie attributes, you can still provide the following attributes.

// set secure attributes manually
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!', { secure: true, __Secure__: true, samesite: 'strict', __Host__: true, path: '/' });

Opt-in State

A huge benefit to Mini-Cookies is the ability to opt-in for state management. Although, document.cookies is only a string api, the fact that attributes are write-only and that there is often a misunderstanding that cookies can't be overwritten can be a problem.

With Mini Cookies, you can opt-in for state management.

const cookies = miniCookies({ hasState: true });
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!');
cookies.review(); // { mini: 'cookies!!!' }

If you don't want opt-in state management, you can still use Mini Cookies without it.

const cookies = miniCookies();
cookies.set('mini', 'cookies!!!');
cookies.review(); // <void>

Sandbox Environments

Note: cookies are not supported in sandbox environments. Within the StackBlitz sandbox, click the "Open in New Tab" button to view mini-cookies in action! See the image below for visual UI reference.

• mini-cookies basic demo
• mini-cookies multi-state instance demo

Comparisons

name	file size	key features
mini-cookies		state management, smart attributes
js-cookie		well known, simple api

Feature Requests

Yes! I'm happy to add more utility to Mini Cookies!

Made by @yowainwright, MIT 2022