What is the shortest function for reading a cookie

Question

What is the shortest, accurate, and cross-browser compatible method for reading a cookie in JavaScript?

Very often, while building stand-alone scripts (where I can't have any outside dependencies), I find myself adding a function for reading cookies, and usually fall-back on the QuirksMode.org readCookie() method (280 bytes, 216 minified.)

function readCookie(name) {
    var nameEQ = name + "=";
    var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
    for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) {
        var c = ca[i];
        while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
        if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
    }
    return null;
}

It does the job, but its ugly, and adds quite a bit of bloat each time.

The method that jQuery.cookie uses something like this (modified, 165 bytes, 125 minified):

function read_cookie(key)
{
    var result;
    return (result = new RegExp('(?:^|; )' + encodeURIComponent(key) + '=([^;]*)').exec(document.cookie)) ? (result[1]) : null;
}

Note this is not a 'Code Golf' competition: I'm legitimately interested in reducing the size of my readCookie function, and in ensuring the solution I have is valid.

Answer 1

(edit: posted the wrong version first.. and a non-functional one at that. Updated to current, which uses an unparam function that is much like the second example.)

Nice idea in the first example cwolves. I built on both for a fairly compact cookie reading/writing function that works across multiple subdomains. Figured I'd share in case anyone else runs across this thread looking for that.

(function(s){
  s.strToObj = function (x,splitter) {
    for ( var y = {},p,a = x.split (splitter),L = a.length;L;) {
      p = a[ --L].split ('=');
      y[p[0]] = p[1]
    }
    return y
  };
  s.rwCookie = function (n,v,e) {
    var d=document,
        c= s.cookies||s.strToObj(d.cookie,'; '),
        h=location.hostname,
        domain;
    if(v){
      domain = h.slice(h.lastIndexOf('.',(h.lastIndexOf('.')-1))+1);
      d.cookie = n + '=' + (c[n]=v) + (e ? '; expires=' + e : '') + '; domain=.' + domain + '; path=/'
    }
    return c[n]||c
  };
})(some_global_namespace)

• If you pass rwCookie nothing, it will get all cookies into cookie storage
• Passed rwCookie a cookie name, it gets that cookie's value from storage
• Passed a cookie value, it writes the cookie and places the value in storage
• Expiration defaults to session unless you specify one

Answer 2

Using cwolves' answer, but not using a closure nor a pre-computed hash :

// Golfed it a bit, too...
function readCookie(n){
  var c = document.cookie.split('; '),
      i = c.length,
      C;

  for(; i>0; i--){
     C = c[i].split('=');
     if(C[0] == n) return C[1];
  }
}

...and minifying...

function readCookie(n){var c=document.cookie.split('; '),i=c.length,C;for(;i>0;i--){C=c[i].split('=');if(C[0]==n)return C[1];}}

...equals 127 bytes.

Answer 3

Here goes.. Cheers!

function getCookie(n) {
    let a = `; ${document.cookie}`.match(`;\\s*${n}=([^;]+)`);
    return a ? a[1] : '';
}

Note that I made use of ES6's template strings to compose the regex expression.

Answer 4

The following function will allow differentiating between empty strings and undefined cookies. Undefined cookies will correctly return undefined and not an empty string unlike some of the other answers here. But it won't work on IE7 and below, since they do not allow array access to string indexes.

    function getCookie(name) {
      return (document.cookie.match('(^|;) *'+name+'=([^;]*)')||"")[2];
    }

Answer 5

code from google analytics ga.js

function c(a){
    var d=[],
        e=document.cookie.split(";");
    a=RegExp("^\\s*"+a+"=\\s*(.*?)\\s*$");
    for(var b=0;b<e.length;b++){
        var f=e[b].match(a);
        f&&d.push(f[1])
    }
    return d
}

Answer 6

Here is the simplest solution using javascript string functions.

document.cookie.substring(document.cookie.indexOf("COOKIE_NAME"), 
                          document.cookie.indexOf(";", 
                          document.cookie.indexOf("COOKIE_NAME"))).
  substr(COOKIE_NAME.length);