Retrieve the Cookie

The returned cookie will be available as a string in the os.environ dictionary with the key 'HTTP_COOKIE':

cookie_string = os.environ.get('HTTP_COOKIE')

The load() method of the SimpleCookie object will parse that string rebuilding the object's mapping:

   cookie.load(cookie_string)

Complete code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import Cookie, os, time

cookie = Cookie.SimpleCookie()
cookie['lastvisit'] = str(time.time())

print cookie
print 'Content-Type: text/html\n'

print '<html><body>'
print '<p>Server time is', time.asctime(time.localtime()), '</p>'

# The returned cookie is available in the os.environ dictionary
cookie_string = os.environ.get('HTTP_COOKIE')

# The first time the page is run there will be no cookies
if not cookie_string:
   print '<p>First visit or cookies disabled</p>'

else: # Run the page twice to retrieve the cookie
   print '<p>The returned cookie string was "' + cookie_string + '"</p>'

   # load() parses the cookie string
   cookie.load(cookie_string)
   # Use the value attribute of the cookie to get it
   lastvisit = float(cookie['lastvisit'].value)
   
   print '<p>Your last visit was at',
   print time.asctime(time.localtime(lastvisit)), '</p>'

print '</body></html>'

When the client first loads the page there will be no cookie in the client's computer to be returned. The second time the page is requested then the cookie saved in the last run will be sent to the server.

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Retrieve the Cookie