What is the shortest function for reading a cookie by name in JavaScript?

Question

What is the shortest, accurate, and cross-browser compatible method for reading a cookie in JavaScript?

Very often, while building stand-alone scri

Answer 1

(edit: posted the wrong version first.. and a non-functional one at that. Updated to current, which uses an unparam function that is much like the second example.)

Nice idea in the first example cwolves. I built on both for a fairly compact cookie reading/writing function that works across multiple subdomains. Figured I'd share in case anyone else runs across this thread looking for that.

(function(s){
  s.strToObj = function (x,splitter) {
    for ( var y = {},p,a = x.split (splitter),L = a.length;L;) {
      p = a[ --L].split ('=');
      y[p[0]] = p[1]
    }
    return y
  };
  s.rwCookie = function (n,v,e) {
    var d=document,
        c= s.cookies||s.strToObj(d.cookie,'; '),
        h=location.hostname,
        domain;
    if(v){
      domain = h.slice(h.lastIndexOf('.',(h.lastIndexOf('.')-1))+1);
      d.cookie = n + '=' + (c[n]=v) + (e ? '; expires=' + e : '') + '; domain=.' + domain + '; path=/'
    }
    return c[n]||c
  };
})(some_global_namespace)

• If you pass rwCookie nothing, it will get all cookies into cookie storage
• Passed rwCookie a cookie name, it gets that cookie's value from storage
• Passed a cookie value, it writes the cookie and places the value in storage
• Expiration defaults to session unless you specify one