Question

How do I set a Rails cookie to start and/or expire at a certain date?

Answer 1

Excerpts from Rails 5 documentation:

Cookies are read and written through ActionController#cookies.

The cookies being read are the ones received along with the request, the cookies being written will be sent out with the response. Reading a cookie does not get the cookie object itself back, just the value it holds.

Examples of writing:

# Sets a simple session cookie.
# This cookie will be deleted when the user's browser is closed.
cookies[:user_name] = "david"

# Sets a cookie that expires in 1 hour.
cookies[:login] = { value: "XJ-122", expires: 1.hour }

# Sets a cookie that expires at a specific time.
cookies[:login] = { value: "XJ-122", expires: Time.utc(2020, 10, 15, 5) }

# Sets a "permanent" cookie (which expires in 20 years from now).
cookies.permanent[:login] = "XJ-122"

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The option symbols for setting cookies are:

• :expires – The time at which this cookie expires, as a Time or ActiveSupport::Duration object.

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