How much data can be stored in the cookie?

Rails
1

I’ve looked online, but I can’t find a concrete answer to this. I’m
considering storing some data in the user’s cookie, to be accessed by
javascript. It’s not sensitive information, so security isn’t a problem.

Altogether, I’m looking at two strings, one of which would be about 100
characters long, and the other closer to 1000 or 1500. Is that too much?

Thanks!

2

I’ve looked online, but I can’t find a concrete answer to this. I’m
considering storing some data in the user’s cookie, to be accessed by
javascript. It’s not sensitive information, so security isn’t a
problem.

Altogether, I’m looking at two strings, one of which would be about
100
characters long, and the other closer to 1000 or 1500. Is that too
much?

Now, how well all the browsers honor this I dunno, but I’ve always
seen the “4k” rule mentioned…

5.3 Implementation Limits
Practical user agent implementations have limits on the number and
size of cookies that they can store. In general, user agents’ cookie
support should have no fixed limits. They should strive to store as
many frequently-used cookies as possible. Furthermore, general-use
user agents SHOULD provide each of the following minimum capabilities
individually, although not necessarily simultaneously:

  • at least 300 cookies
  • at least 4096 bytes per cookie (as measured by the characters that
    comprise the cookie non-terminal in the syntax description of the Set-
    Cookie2 header, and as received in the Set-Cookie2 header)
  • at least 20 cookies per unique host or domain name User agents
    created for specific purposes or for limited-capacity devices SHOULD
    provide at least 20 cookies of 4096 bytes, to ensure that the user can
    interact with a session-based origin server.
    The information in a Set-Cookie2 response header MUST be retained in
    its entirety. If for some reason there is inadequate space to store
    the cookie, it MUST be discarded, not truncated.
    Applications should use as few and as small cookies as possible, and
    they should cope gracefully with the loss of a cookie.
3

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Session/CookieStore.html:

This cookie-based session store is the Rails default. Sessions
typically contain at most a user_id and flash message; both fit within
the 4K cookie size limit. Cookie-based sessions are dramatically
faster than the alternatives.

4

Thanks you two. I’d found the 4kb limit, but wasn’t sure how that would
come out in real-world usage - i.e., does Rails use up some of that
space on its own, would the use of a secret and hash affect that… I
also forgot to mention that I’m using Authlogic, which I believe would
also take up some space.