What is Django Cookies

In this article, we will learn about Django Cookies. It is a very important topic to learn because it will be helpful in different projects like e-commerce websites etc. If you have learned another framework or web programming language then you will have a basic concept of Cookie. If you have not, then we will share knowledge with you with examples. Let’s start to learn!

A cookie is a small piece of data or information about a user. In that data, there may be different types of data which is sent by the webserver. Such data is stored in the user machine as a web browser. When you want you can delete this cookie data, or if you did not want to delete it, then automatically it will be expired.

A real-life example related to Cookie

For example, you visit a hotel anyone like Usama Hotel. When sitting on a chair, a waiter comes to you, asking you which products you need. You give the order for some products and finish. After some time, you again visit that same hotel, and again the waiter asks you which product you need, you told him the same products again. So at this moment, the hotel organizer will make a list of products that are liked by you and that list is given to you by the hotel management team. When you come again that hotel, you did not need to ask him for bringing that product or they also did not need to ask you. So it is the cookie that helps the hotel organizer or manager team save time in asking or discussing the same products.

In the case of the hotel example, user cookie information should be like this one

Name
Hotel name
Room No
Most liked product

In the case of a website, user information will be like this:

User ID
website name
web page
products you add to the cart
name of products
your address
email address and other information

Cookies Work Flow for Better Understanding

I think you have clear your concept of basic level, to make your strong concept, we shared a complete working flow of cookies pointwise. It will be beneficial for you to understand easily!

When a user requests any website or web page, it reaches that webserver.
After reaching your request, the server read the request and give the response in the form of a web page
When you received a web page in your browser, and you make some changes on that web page like add to cart products, your IP, user name, etc
Such information is stored in your web browser by the web server and a unique key is taken by the webserver for tracking specific users.
When you visit the same web page again and make a request then your stored cookie will also go to the webserver, then the server understood that it is the same user who visits before this web page because the server has a unique ID that is used to track you.
Using the unique key will be helpful for the webserver to maintain your web page as changes are made with you like add-to-cart products, a number of products, other details in the form, etc.
The web server did not need to investigate a user again because the server has already information about returning users.
So, such user’s information, the server will not share with another server.

Understanding and Working with Django Cookies

As we have mentioned two examples related to cookies, you will have cleared now, in this section we will learn to work with Django cookies with code examples. You have to learn some commands to work with Cookie, then you will be able to work with cookies all about in projects

set_cookie(key, value=”, max_age=None, expires=None, path=’/’, domain=None, secure=None, httponly=False, samesite=None)

set_cookie function takes a number of arguments, but you have to keep only three arguments, which is very important to know, remaining are also important but as a beginner, it is sufficient to understand three arguments.

Key: It is the key, using that you will access the cookie from coding

Value: It is the original value which stores in the browser with a key. When you access the value, you will use its key to get its value

Max_age: Cookies have max-age, which means, after passing their age, they will expire automatically.

e.g.

set_cookie(‘name’, ‘Faisal Zamir’), so this cookie is set, this information will be store in the client machine as a browser.

HttpRequest.COOKIES: This is the dictionary, which will give all the cookies we created for a user. It will contain keys and values. We can easily understand, values and keys, which make it easy for us to get values for specific keys.

request.COOKIES[‘key’]: It will be used for getting a value for a specific key, as in the above example, we have created a cookie with a name key and provide a value ‘Faisal Zamir’ we can access that value using this command, e.g.

request.COOKIES[‘name’] which will give a value of ‘name’ key that is ‘Faisal Zamir’

Now! what you have to do?

As you have understood this article about “Django Cookies”, now you must follow instructions as discussed in this article. In case of any issues or problems, don’t worry, you can discuss them with us.

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