mod_usertrack/2233: Incorrect writing of the date string in cookies to MSIE

[Tim Carroll <ti...@im.picker.com>]

The following reply was made to PR mod_usertrack/2233; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Tim Carroll <ti...@im.picker.com>
To: brian@hyperreal.org
Cc: apbugs@Apache.Org
Subject: mod_usertrack/2233: Incorrect writing of the date string in 
 cookies to MSIE
Date: Thu, 28 May 98 15:48:19 EDT

 My apologies for not including the URL of the relevant Microsoft document:
 
 http://premium.microsoft.com/msdn/library/partbook/instantj/html/javascriptcooki
 es.htm
 
 This is (was) the only reference to by-hand date formatting of cookies on
 the entire site and now it seems not to exist anymore although, as you
 probably saw, it is still listed as available by the site search.
 
 I printed a copy of the doc before it disappeared and I will fax it to you
 if you are interested in looking it over. Please let me know.
 
  In short, the document states:
 
 "The date for 'expires' requires the exact format that the toGMTString()
 method of the date object produces:
 
 //example date: 'Mon, 13 Oct 1997 12:40:34 GMT'	"
 
 Of course we are dealing with Microsoft's JavaScript  here and not
 something explicitly server/cgi-generated however my results from resetting
 the line of code in mod_usertrack.c *did* result in my setting a persistent
 cookie, one written to the Cookie file, where I hadn't been able to do
 before with the standard build.
 
 I checked www.expedia.com and didn't find any "expires="-style Set-Cookie
 header at all.
 
 I did, however, find a Microsoft server, www.nomade.fr, which set a cookie
 to all of my browsers using the Netscape (with hyphens) method.
 
 So, I'm now not so sure of the validity of my orginal bug post. Still, the
 sans-hyphen method is the only one which works for my MSIE 4.x Win32 from
 Apache and I will use my own build for a forthcoming version of our server.