Question

I’m trying to use Javascript to update some cookies for a website. It should look to see if an existing cookie as a certain value. If so, delete the cookie and replace it.

Instead, it’s adding the new cookie without removing the original.

Here’s my code

$(document).ready(function(){
if(getCookie('ref') == 'na') {
    $.cookie('ref', null, { path: '/', expires: -5 });
    $.cookie('ref', Base64.encode(document.referrer), { expires: 365 });
}

});

Here’s the cookie library I’m using: https://github.com/carhartl/jquery-cookie

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

To delete a cookie, you must set it with the exact same path and domain you intend to delete it from. Specify the path in both $.cookie() calls, and if the domain was specified in any previous code, the domain must be specified as an exact match in the jQuery code.

$(document).ready(function() {
  if(getCookie('ref') == 'na') {
      $.cookie('ref', null, { path: '/', expires: -5 });
      $.cookie('ref', Base64.encode(document.referrer), {path: '/', expires: 365 });
  }
});

However, there is no real need to delete the cookie if you just intend to overwrite it:

$(document).ready(function() {
  if(getCookie('ref') == 'na') {
    // Just write the new cookie over the old one...
    $.cookie('ref', Base64.encode(document.referrer), {path: '/', expires: 365 });
  }
 });