Cookie testing is all about testing the cookies that present at client side in local machines or computers or browsers. Before going through the methods of cookie testing, a basic understanding of the cookie would be useful in clearly understanding the concept of cookie testing.
A Cookie is basically an automatically generated file, which is stored at client's/ user's machines i.e. in computer by the web server and is responsible for keeping the personalized information and data of the user. It is, generally stored in the hard drive of the computer.
It is a small file with the maximum size of 4kb that records the activities carried out by the user at the web server and at later stages, this information log is being retrieved by the web browser to establish the connection between different web pages.
It serves the purpose of maintaining the communication between the user and the web server. Its common use can be seen in memorizing the user's e-mail address and password. Best use of cookies may be seen in the ecommerce/ online shopping websites, providing effective implementation of shopping carts and user tracking.
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Generally, there are two types of cookies that resides at user's system.
This type of cookie gets active on the call made by the web-browser and automatically gets deleted on the termination of the session by that web-browser.
These cookies reside permanently on the user's machine and have a specific time-period for the expiration, which may last for few months or year.
The process of testing the cookies may be carried out through implementing following strategies:
It is one of the simplest ways of performing the cookie testing. This method evaluates the working of major functional areas of the site after disabling the cookies present on the web-browser. Either site may ask you to enable cookies on your browser or it may take some other alternative to work.
This method is carried out by editing the cookie data or its values present at the site of local machines and providing it with the random or the invalid data. By editing the cookie data, one may gain access to internal and confidential data that may lead to website hacking. Thus, it is an effective testing approach for the organizations, where data and information are considered very much sensitive such as banking institutions.
This technique simply involves the deletion of all the cookies of the website, and thereafter evaluating and assessing the website's functioning.
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This testing is used to verify the website effectiveness to write cookies properly across all the browsers.
Cookies are responsible for storing the sensitive and authorized data such as passwords. Storing this kind of information in a plain text may prove to be risky. Through this testing, it is verified that the sensitive data are encrypted by the sites before being sent to the user's system.
It simply checks the appropriate working of the sites after bringing changes in the settings of the cookies.
"Overall, it may be stated that the cookie of just 4kb size is one of the essential components to carry out frequent & repetitive communication involving personal & confidential data & information between the client and the server, and thus these cookies need to be tested in order to ensure the avoidance of any sort of issues and security breaches during client and server communication."
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