Cookie Testing

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It simply refers to the testing of cookies, present at client side, in local machines or computers or browsers. But before, exploring the methods of the cookie testing, a little understanding of cookie would be gainful for understanding the working behind its testing.

What is Cookie?

A Cookie is basically an automatically generated file, which is stored at client's/ user's machines i.e. computer by the web server and is responsible for keeping the personalized information and data of the user. It is, generally stored in the hard drive of the computer.
It is a small file, with the maximum size of 4kb that records the activities, carried out by the user at the web server and at a later stage, this information log is being retrieved by the web browser, to establish the connection between different web pages.
It serves the purpose of maintaining the communication between the user and the web server. Its common use can be seen, in memorizing the user's e-mail address and password. In addition, cookies show their effectiveness in the implementation of the shopping cart, in personalized sites and user tracking.

Types of cookies

Generally, there are two types of cookies that resides in the user's system.

• Session cookies: This type of cookie gets active on the call made by the web-browser and automatically gets deleted on the termination of the session by that web-browser.
  
• Persistent cookies: These cookies reside permanently on the user's machine and have a specific time-period for the expiration, which may last for few months or year.
  

How it is tested?

The process of testing the cookies may be carried out through implementing following strategies

Deactivating the Cookies

It is one of the simplest ways of cookie testing. This method evaluates the working of major functional areas of the site, after disabling the cookies present on the web-browser. Either site may ask you to enable cookies on your browser or it may take some other alternative to work, on deactivation of the cookies.

Corrupting the Cookies

This method is carried out by editing the cookie data or its values, present at the site of local machines and providing it with random or invalid data. By editing the cookie data, one may gain access to internal and confidential data that may lead to hacking of the sites. Thus, it is an effective testing for the organizations, where data and information are considered very much sensitive, such as in banking system.

Rejecting the Cookies