sending expressjs cookie by json

Question

sending expressjs cookie by json

I saw the data in express api reference

in the document, cookie can send as JSON res.cookie('cart', { items: [1,2,3] });

so I started to try, cookie worked well when I use string, but not in JSON format.

   res.cookie('cookietmp',{test: ['test1', 'test2']}, { maxAge: 900000, httpOnly: true});
   res.send('test cookie: ' + req.cookies.cookietmp)

this is my code

and my browser display

   test cookie: [object Object]

it seems like my browser doesn't know the format is JSON or something, how can I solve it?

json
node.js
cookies
express

Answer 1

That's an object literal, not JSON. JSON is a serialization format, but what you'retrying to set as the cookie value is not a string. You see '[object Object]' in the browser because that's what Object.toString returns.

You, the progammer, need to convert that object into JSON using JSON.stringify:

var cookieValue = JSON.stringify({test: ['test1', 'test2']}, { maxAge: 900000, httpOnly: true});
res.cookie('cookietmp', cookieValue);