Spring Boot Cookies Example

By Atul Rai | Last Updated: December 17, 2020 Previous       Next

In this article, we’ll explore how to use cookies in the Spring Boot application. A cookie is a small piece of information stored in the user’s web browser. Cookies are helpful to show user personalized contents, login management, etc.

In a Spring Boot application, a cookie can be set by using the Cookie class and add in server response using HttpServletResponse class, similarly, a cookie can be retrieved by using @CookieValue annotation.

In this example, we’ll learn the following about a cookie:

1. Set a cookie
2. Get the cookie
3. Set expiry of a cookie
4. Delete a cookie

1. Set Cookie

addCookie(Cookie cookie) method of HttpServletResponse class is used to set a new cookie with a Cookie class instance.

@GetMapping("/set")
public String setCookie(HttpServletResponse response) {
    // set a new cookie
    Cookie cookie = new Cookie("color", "blue");
    // add cookie in server response
    response.addCookie(cookie);

    return "Spring Boot Cookies";
}

2. Get Cookie

The @CookieValue annotation is the easiest way to get a cookie from the user request. It will throw the MissingRequestCookieException when the requested cookie is not found. It is handled by setting a default value of a requested cookie.

@GetMapping("/get")
public String getCookie(@CookieValue(value = "color",
        defaultValue = "No color found in cookie") String color) {

    return "Sky is: " + color;
}

3. Set Cookie Expiry

Cookie expiry is the time period in which it is removed from the web browser. Cookie expiry is set by the setMaxAge(int expiry) method where expiry is an integer specifying the maximum age of the cookie in seconds; if negative, means the cookie is not stored; if zero, deletes the cookie.

@GetMapping("/expiry")
public String setCookieExpiry(HttpServletResponse response) {

    int cookieAgeInSeconds = 86400;

    Cookie cookie = new Cookie("website", "https://websparrow.org");
    cookie.setMaxAge(cookieAgeInSeconds); // expire in 1 day
    response.addCookie(cookie);

    return "Cookie will expire in " + cookieAgeInSeconds + "seconds.";
}

4. Delete Cookie

To delete a cookie, set the Max-Age directive to 0 and unset its value.

@GetMapping("/delete")
public String deleteCookie(HttpServletResponse response) {

    Cookie cookie = new Cookie("color", null);
    cookie.setMaxAge(0); // delete cookie
    response.addCookie(cookie);

    return "Cookie deleted";
}

References

1. HTTP cookie
2. Class Cookie
3. @CookieValue Annotation