Cookie Testing

Why Cookie is needed?

As you know Stateless (HTTP) protocol which does not record previous interaction, it treat every request as new. Suppose your browser wanted to interact with some XYZ server.So,Browser send first request to the XYZ server using stateless HTTP Protocol, Then XYZ server send response of your first request, once you received first request and again browser send second request to XYZ server that time XYZ server treat second request as new request.It doesn’t bother about what it send earlier? It doesn’t keep the record. So,Now can you imagine how stateless http work in ecommerce site, shopping site ?how theses site keep record of the purchase item? User identity and all?

Answer of all is Cookies.

What is Cookie?

The cookie is a text file saved in your browser's directory or folder and It stored in RAM while your browser is running. Cookie generated by a web server and stored in the user's computer, ready for future access. Normally Web sites use cookies to store personal preferences or tracking data.

There are two types of cookies

1. Persistence Cookies: The cookies that written permanently on the user machine. Max age of this cookie is 1 year.

2.Session Cookies: The cookies active till the browser open when we close the browser cookie get deleted .

Where the Cookies stored?

Cookies are stored in a cookie.txt file located in  user profile directory

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\ cookies.txt

IIN IE browser you can easily find the cookie path where the cookie is stored on the computer.

Go to tool>>internet option >>General tab>>under Browsing history>>Click on setting>>there you find current location of cookies

Basically you can change your browser setting according to your need. If you want that before storing the cookies by web site it will shows prompt message or something warning so you can change the setting or Even you can disable the cookies also.

Cookie Attribute:

Cookie basically come with name-value pair, apart from that server set expiration time, path, cookie domain ,maximum age.

Now the next questing is how to test Cookie? How to do Cookie testing?

Disabling/Deleting the Cookie:

Delete the all cookie set by site which under test. One thing which is important that deleting Cookie you need to close browser so that no pre-session cookies in memory.

After that test those feature and function of the site which require the cookie ,you will come to know that those feature doesn’t work because of deleting those cookies which help to run the feature. That doesn't mean it's bug, it’s happened because of the disabling the cookies. It's  might possible that not every user keep the cookie enable, In that case those site require cookie need to be enabled to work the site then the site has to be send message to user that cookie need to be enable to work the site.

Reject Cookie:

You can do testing of cookie by accepting some cookies and rejecting other and check the functionality howspan style="mso-spacerun:yes"> 

iit work by rejecting cookie. For that you need to set your browser’s cookie option to prompt you whenever website attempts to set a cookie and then exercise the functionality.

Corrupt the Cookie:

For that you need to know whether the cookies are stored. Then change the cookie parameter like cookie name, expiry date, session id and all.

Check that Cookie generated by different browser:

Here the site which is under test which need to be check different browser. That different browser site generated the cookie or not .

Check the how Cookie stored sensitive Data:

It's important that sensitive data need to be stored in encrypted format.Sensitiva data like User credit card ID,User Data etc.So even if some one open the cookies file then can not mess with the data. So that need to be check how the cookie stored the sensitive data.

 Related Documents:

Difference Between Cookie and Cache