Summary

Cookies are a point of frustration for many Web developers, and this chapter should give you a much better understanding of cookies as well as the challenges involved in maintaining state.

Most importantly, being more aware of the actual HTTP communication gives you important insight into how cookies are implemented. This alone gives you a great advantage over other developers in situations where you must resolve technical problems related to the use of cookies or explain their use to others.

The following chapter expands on the topics introduced here by presenting additional methods of state management. I also discuss the use of combination methods to defend against certain types of attacks.