Inside Macintosh: QuickTime Reference

Additional Cookie Support

In QuickTime 4.1, servers can set and access cookies via the HTTP data handler. The HTTP data handler uses the cookie component to store and retrieve cookies, formatted according to the Netscape cookie specification, which is available at

<http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html>.

Both permanent and session-scoped cookies are supported, with permanent cookies being timed-out correctly. Permanent cookies have an expiration date and are accessible by any application until the cookie expires. Session-scoped cookies are accessible only to the current running application and expire as soon as that application quits.

The way cookies are handled is affected by the following:

the choice of what HTTP code is used
the operating system
the browser

There may be multiple cookie databases on an end user's system, and so a system using cookies may set a cookie into one database, which is then not returned when another database is referenced by a different HTTP handler. It may be necessary to perform some kind of cookie-synchronization to mitigate this effect.

The HTTP data handler is used by QuickTime for all HTTP accesses which occur outside the QuickTime Plug-in, and for some of the accesses performed by the QuickTime Plug-in as well. In general, the Plug-in uses the browser's built-in HTTP mechanism unless it is unsuitable, i.e., a scheme the browser can't handle, such as RTSP.

Note that there are parameters to the EMBED tag which can force the use of the QuickTime data handler.

On the Mac OS the cookie component stores the cookies in the QuickTime Preferences file. This cookie database is distinct from that used by browsers. On Windows the cookie component stores cookies using Win32 Internet functions in the same database used by Internet Explorer (but not Netscape Navigator).

On Windows, the user can control cookie hamdling using the Internet control panel, since the system's cookie database is used. On Mac OS, there is no user control of the QuickTime cookie database.

Inside Macintosh: QuickTime Reference