How to completely eliminate cookies? (REALLY need help on this one)

[Scott Steele]

I really need help on this. I'm developing a TiddlyWiki to act as my
organization's navigation tool for finding files on our extremely slow
and cumbersome internal website/server.

Problem: Some of the options TiddlyWiki saves to a cookie apparently
conflict with the internal website's own cookie options. The
TiddlyWiki has to be hosted on / loaded from the internal website and
so its cookie has the same url/name as the internal website. Various
useful TiddlyWiki plugins leave cookies that either stop one from
being able to upload anything to the internal website or even prevent
it from opening at all.

Telling every user of this site to delete their cookies after viewing
the website is not an option.

I can't get access to the contents of the cookie because our
information management permissions process is slow, complicated, and
doesn't even understand my problem.

I've done many things to try to solve this:

I used the CookieManager plugin and set it to disallow any cookies,
but a cookie was still being dropped.

I tried disabling plugins, re-uploading, and testing. After getting
rid of several useful plugins, I was at least able to still access the
internal website. However, I would have to disable the advanced search
plugin in order to fix the issue with not being able to upload to the
internal site. I really need advanced search since it both provides
some of the visitor/editor segregation and also is one of the main
selling features of using TiddlyWiki for my organization.

I tried renaming the options in the advanced search plugin (in
particular) to names that would probably not be used as cookie options
by our internal site. This didn't seem to work.

What DOES work is it manually edit the TiddlyWiki source code to
comment-out the innards of the saveCookie function:

function saveCookie(name)
{
// var cookies = {};
// for(var key in config.options) {
// var value = getOption(key);
// value = value == null ? 'false' : value;
// cookies[key] = value;
// }
// document.cookie = 'TiddlyWiki=' + String.encodeHashMap(cookies) +
'; expires=Fri, 1 Jan 2038 12:00:00 UTC; path=/';
// cookies = getCookies();
// for(var c in cookies) {
// var optType = c.substr(0,3);
// if(config.optionHandlers[optType])
// removeCookie(c);
// }
}

My problem, though, is that this has to be done after every upgrade of
the TiddlyWiki template, which I sometimes need to do after going
through the copy/paste/file-rename steps necessary for Windows to
allow TiddlyWiki to save. (These steps often screw up the TiddlyWiki
template so that it doesn't think the TiddlyWiki file is valid. It
will then refuse to save changes until I upgrade.)

I don't mind doing this manually so much. It's a hassle, but it
doesn't take very long. I can't expect any of the other members of our
website team to do it, though, and I need to have our TiddlyWiki in a
state that it can be maintained/updated without me.

I tried making systemConfig file like this:
//{{{
function saveCookie(name) { }
//}}}

I thought/hoped it would overwrite the function even when it's intact
in the original source code. If it does, it doesn't do it before the
TiddlyWiki drops a cookie that screws up [the ability to access] our
internal website.

I really need help on this since I don't know what else to do, and
this is an issue that could possibly jeopard the use of TiddlyWiki by
my organization.

Thanks,

Scott

[Yakov]

Hi Scott,

What about hijacking [1]?

[1] http://mptw2.tiddlyspot.com/#HijackingHowto

[HansBKK]

Don't know much about cookies, but these two plugins will save the settings usually stored in browser cookies in a tiddler called CookieJar (flagged systemConfig)

http://www.tiddlytools.com/#CookieManagerPlugin
http://www.tiddlytools.com/#CookieSaverPlugin

If you want to override any (set them to a certain value at startup for all users) use zzConfigOptions.

[perlguy]

As mentioned... hijacking the internal functions is probably the way
to go... but - in 2.6.2 (and probably earlier versions too), there's
an alias as well. Here's what I use, to force most options to be
saved as settings, not cookies (in SystemConfig tiddler). I did have
to prime SystemConfig initially - I didn't want to flush my cached
cookies, and was too lazy to delete the tiddler specific cookie(s). If
I had thought about putting this as a first load tiddler, instead of
last load, and overridden the function that reads cookie settngs, that
would have been cleaner/more portable. But once I got it working, I
didn't think of that - until your problem was presented. Notice the
saveOption AND saveOptionCookie overrides at the end.

//# ensure that the plugin is only installed once
if(!version.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin) {
version.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin = { installed: true };

config.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin = {

oldSaveOption: saveOption,
newSaveOption: function(name) {
if (name.match(/txt.*Tab$|chkSlider|chkBackstage/)) { return };
config.optionsSource[name] = 'setting';
config.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin.oldSaveOption(name);
}
}
function saveCookie(name){ return }
saveOption = config.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin.newSaveOption;
saveOptionCookie = saveOption;

}
//# end of "install only once"


Also, this is what I used to convert all my options from cookies to
settings, in the first place:

/*
// convert cookies to settings - needed once to mass convert
for(var key in config.options) {
config.optionsSource[key] = 'setting';
}
*/

[Scott Steele]

Thanks a lot to everyone who replied! Problem solved!

I had tried using the CookieManager plugin, but it didn't completely
prevent cookie creation.

I didn't really have to hijack the function to get what I wanted, but
just looking at the code at the site Yakov mentioned gave me a fix.

The only JavaScript I know I've picked up while tinkering with
TiddlyWiki, so I don't //fully// understand why what I have now works
and what I had before didn't, but here's the code that will completely
kill cookies:

//{{{
window.saveCookie = function(name) { }
//}}}

Does it have something to do with the core TiddlyWiki code running at
a level where all the declared functions are being assigned to window?

Anyway, Thanks again! That solved a major hassle!

Scott

On Jun 28, 1:12 am, perlguy <perl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As mentioned... hijacking the internal functions is probably the way
> to go... but - in 2.6.2 (and probably earlier versions too), there's
> an alias as well.  Here's what I use, to force most options to be
> saved as settings, not cookies (in SystemConfig tiddler).  I did have
> to prime SystemConfig initially - I didn't want to flush my cached
> cookies, and was too lazy to delete the tiddler specific cookie(s). If
> I had thought about putting this as a first load tiddler, instead of
> last load, and overridden the function that reads cookie settngs, that
> would have been cleaner/more portable.  But once I got it working, I
> didn't think of that - until your problem was presented.   Notice the
> saveOption AND saveOptionCookie overrides at the end.
>
> //# ensure that the plugin is only installed once
> if(!version.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin) {
> version.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin = { installed: true };
>
> config.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin = {
>
>         oldSaveOption: saveOption,
>         newSaveOption: function(name) {
>                 if (name.match(/txt.*Tab$|chkSlider|chkBackstage/)) { return };
>                 config.optionsSource[name] = 'setting';
>                 config.extensions.ForceSettingsPlugin.oldSaveOption(name);
>         }}
>

> functionsaveCookie(name){ return }

> > Scott- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -