saving a form value to a cookie

**Guava** · Apr 16, 2001, 22:35

I want to save the form value for a persons USERNAME in a cookie when they are logging into my free e-mail service. So when they come back I can lookup the cookie and write the value for their username back into that spot in the form.

I've got it working for the drop-down menu so that it will change to whatever domain they selected the last time they logged in but I can't get it to work for the username box.

in case you want to see the form I'm talking about it's the e-mail login form on http://www.guavamail.com

Thanks.

**Rips** · Apr 17, 2001, 07:22

Man this question keeps coming up!

You can use a function like this to store the username:

<script language="JavaScript">
// makeCookie() function
// Coded by Rips (April 2001)

function makeCookie() {
// Declare a date object then set its month property to 3 months from now
var expireAt = new Date;
expireAt.setMonth(expireAt.getMonth() + 3);

// Store a cookie containing the username and expiry date
document.cookie = "name=" + escape(document.info.user.value) + "; expires=" + expireAt.toGMTString();
}
</script>

Then add an action to your form, say onSubmit or onClick that will call the function when you need to store the username:

<form onSubmit="makeCookie()">

On other pages you can write the value to a form field using sommat like this:

<script language="JavaScript">
// fillIn() function
// Coded by Rips (March 2001)

function fillIn() {
// Read the cookie property. This returns all cookies for this document
var allCookies = document.cookie;

// Look for the start of the cookie named "name"
var pos = allCookies.indexOf("name=");

// If we find a cookie by that name, extract and use its value
if (pos != -1) {
// Start of cookie value
var start = pos + 5;
// End of cookie value
var end = allCookies.indexOf(";", start);
if (end == -1) end = allCookies.length;
// Extract the value
var cookieCrumb = allCookies.substring(start, end);
// Decode it
cookieCrumb = unescape(cookieCrumb);

// Now that we have the cookie value we can use it
document.info.user.value = cookieCrumb;
}
else
document.info.user.value = "username not set";
}
</script>

Then just call this function from the body tag with:
<body onLoad="fillIn()">

Is that what you're looking for geezer?

**Guava** · Apr 17, 2001, 10:58

Worked perfectly. Thanks a lot!

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