How to access cookies in AngularJS?

What's the AngularJS way to access cookies? I've seen references to both a service and a module for cookies, but no examples.

Is there, or is there not an AngularJS canonical approach?

This answer has been updated to reflect latest stable angularjs version. One important note is that $cookieStore is a thin wrapper surrounding $cookies. They are pretty much the same in that they only work with session cookies. Although, this answers the original question, there are other solutions you may wish to consider such as using localstorage, or jquery.cookie plugin (which would give you more fine-grained control and do serverside cookies. Of course doing so in angularjs means you probably would want to wrap them in a service and use scope.apply to notify angular of changes to models (in some cases).

One other note and that is that there is a slight difference between the two when pulling data out depending on if you used $cookie to store value or $cookieStore. Of course, you'd really want to use one or the other.

In addition to adding reference to the js file you need to inject ngCookies into your app definition such as: 

angular.module('myApp', ['ngCookies']);

you should then be good to go.

Here is a functional minimal example, where I show that cookieStore is a thin wrapper around cookies:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html ng-app="myApp">
<head>
   <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.2.0/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body ng-controller="MyController">

  <h3>Cookies</h3>
  <pre>{{usingCookies|json}}</pre>
  <h3>Cookie Store</h3>
  <pre>{{usingCookieStore|json}}</pre>

  <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.19/angular.js"></script>
  <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.19/angular-cookies.js"></script>
  <script>
    angular.module('myApp', ['ngCookies']);
    app.controller('MyController',['$scope','$cookies','$cookieStore', 
                       function($scope,$cookies,$cookieStore) {
      var someSessionObj = { 'innerObj' : 'somesessioncookievalue'};

    $cookies.dotobject = someSessionObj;
    $scope.usingCookies = { 'cookies.dotobject' : $cookies.dotobject, "cookieStore.get" : $cookieStore.get('dotobject') };

    $cookieStore.put('obj', someSessionObj);
    $scope.usingCookieStore = { "cookieStore.get" : $cookieStore.get('obj'), 'cookies.dotobject' : $cookies.obj, };
    }
  </script>

</body>
</html>

The steps are:

  1. include angular.js
  2. include angular-cookies.js
  3. inject ngCookies into your app module (and make sure you reference that module in the ng-app attribute)
  4. add a $cookies or $cookieStore parameter to the controller
  5. access the cookie as a member variable using the dot (.) operator -- OR --
  6. access cookieStore using put/get methods

This is how you can set and get cookie values. This is what I was originally looking for when I found this question.

Note we use $cookieStore instead of $cookies

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html ng-app="myApp">
<head>
  <script src="http://code.angularjs.org/1.0.0rc10/angular-1.0.0rc10.js"></script>
  <script src="http://code.angularjs.org/1.0.0rc10/angular-cookies-1.0.0rc10.js"></script>
  <script>
    angular.module('myApp', ['ngCookies']);
    function CookieCtrl($scope, $cookieStore) {
      $scope.lastVal = $cookieStore.get('tab');

      $scope.changeTab = function(tabName){
          $scope.lastVal = tabName;
          $cookieStore.put('tab', tabName);
      };
    }
  </script>
</head>
<body ng-controller="CookieCtrl">
    <!-- ... -->
</body>
</html>

http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngCookies.$cookieStore

Make sure you include http://code.angularjs.org/1.0.0rc10/angular-cookies-1.0.0rc10.js to use it.

FYI, I put together a JSFiddle of this using the $cookieStore, two controllers, a $rootScope, and AngularjS 1.0.6. It's on JSFifddle as http://jsfiddle.net/krimple/9dSb2/ as a base if you're messing around with this...

The gist of it is:

(javascript)

var myApp = angular.module('myApp', ['ngCookies']);

myApp.controller('CookieCtrl', function ($scope, $rootScope, $cookieStore) {
    $scope.bump = function () {
        var lastVal = $cookieStore.get('lastValue');
        if (!lastVal) {
            $rootScope.lastVal = 1;
        } else {
            $rootScope.lastVal = lastVal + 1;
        }
        $cookieStore.put('lastValue', $rootScope.lastVal);
    }
});

myApp.controller('ShowerCtrl', function () {
});

HTML

<div ng-app="myApp">
    <div id="lastVal" ng-controller="ShowerCtrl">{{ lastVal }}</div>
    <div id="button-holder" ng-controller="CookieCtrl">
        <button ng-click="bump()">Bump!</button>
    </div>
</div>

Hope it helps those experimenting.

Ken

Angular deprecated $cookieStore in version 1.4.x, so use $cookies instead if you are using latest version of angular. Syntax remain same for $cookieStore & $cookies: 

$cookies.put("key", "value"); 
var value = $cookies.get("key");

See the Docs for an API overview. Mind also that the cookie service has been enhanced with some new important features like setting expiration (see this answer) and domain (see CookiesProvider Docs).

Note that, in version 1.3.x or below, $cookies has a different syntax than above: 

$cookies.key = "value";
var value = $cookies.value;

Also if you are using bower, make sure to type your package name correctly: 

bower install angular-cookies@X.Y.Z

where X.Y.Z is the AngularJS version you are running. There's another package in bower "angular-cookie"(without the 's') which is not the official angular package.