Question

When I try to read my cookie that I have set something does not seem right

Here is my cookie functions

function readCookie(){
if (document.cookie !=""){
    document.getElementsByName("eMail").innerHTML = alert("hello, " +    
document.cookie.split("=")[1]);
}
}

//for setting cookies
function writeCookie(cName, cValue, expDate, cPath, cDomain, cSecure){
if(cName && cValue!= ""){
var cString = cName + " = " + escape(cValue);

if (expDate) cString += ";expires=" + expDate,toGMString();
if (cPath) cString += ";path=" + cPath;
if (cDomain) cString += ";domain=" + cDomain;
if (cSecure) cString += ";secure";

document.cookie = cString;
}
}

cookie being set

 <input type="submit" value="Submit"     
onclick="writeCookie('userId',document.getElementsByName('eMail').value)"/>

alert box

hello, undefined;__utma

thought on what this means?

Answer 1

The alert function returns undefined

So

 document.getElementsByName("eMail").innerHTML = alert("hello, " + 
       document.cookie.split("=")[1]);

Is setting the html of eMail to undefined.

Also, getElementsByName returns a collection of elements.

Did you mean

document.getElementsByName("eMail")[0].innerHTML = "hello, " +    
       document.cookie.split("=")[1];

Or are there multiple elements with this name?

var eMailElements = document.getElementsByName("eMail");
for (var i = 0; i < eMailElements.length; i++)
    eMailElements[i].innerHTML = "hello, " + document.cookie.split("=")[1];

Finally, if there’s only one element you’re targeting, you can give it a (unique) id, then simply do

document.getElementById("eMailId").innerHTML = "hello, " +    
       document.cookie.split("=")[1];