Every time I talked about web cookies, my ex-girlfriend would say, “Mmmm, cookies.”

Besides messing with my train of thought, it also gave me an unhealthy obsession with cookie implementations in web development. Today, I was taking apart how YUI implements subcookies, and the source had this comment in the subcookie parser…

/**
 * Parses a cookie hash string into an object.
 * @param {String} text The cookie hash string to parse. The string should already be URL-decoded.
 *…
*/

O RLY? Because it’s “already” URL-decoded, I don’t have to worry about double-encoding/decoding? That’s news to me.

Time to test the front-end coding wizardry:

// Include YUI utilities, logger, and cookie-beta (2.5.0)
// logger
var myLogReader = new YAHOO.widget.LogReader(document.body.appendChild(document.createElement("div"));

var Cookie = YAHOO.util.Cookie;
//Cookie.set("example", '');
var ex_cookie = Cookie.get("example");
var foo = Cookie.getSub("example", "foo");
var bar = Cookie.getSub("example", "bar");
var bogus = Cookie.getSub("example", "and");

YAHOO.log("The value of cookie 'example' is: " + ex_cookie);
YAHOO.log("The subcookie 'foo' is: " + foo);
YAHOO.log("The subcookie 'bar' is: " + bar);
YAHOO.log("The subcookie 'and' is: " + bogus);

//set subcookie values
Cookie.setSub("example", "foo", "Can YUI handle &and='s or not?");
Cookie.setSub("example", "bar", "more data");

The output after the second reload is:

The value of cookie 'example' is: foo=Can YUI handle &and='s or not?&bar=more data
The subcookie 'foo' is: Can YUI handle
The subcookie 'bar' is: more data
The subcookie 'and' is: 's or not?

Subcookie “and”? Doh! I guess that’s why this code is listed as “beta.”

Cookie Monster doesn’t like broken subcookies!

Here is a hint: If you nest serializations, you need to nest your escaping/unescaping.

(On the other hand, you only need to escape “=” and “&” instead of using this strategy.)

The other day someone asked me again about what I thought about jQuery, and I’m getting tired of repeating myself for almost a year. jQuery actually is fodder for an interview question I sometimes ask:

What’s wrong with the jQuery $() function?

[Showing you the money after the jump.]Continue reading →

We use YUI at Tagged because that’s what I chose. We lost a couple front end engineers at Tagged so I’m having to pick up the slack—this means actually having to learn the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) in earnest. So I whipped up this diagram of YUI 2.5:

There are some errors, but it’s good enough for me to get started. Download the OmniGraffle document here. Corrections appreciated!

“What?!” You say. “Someone set us up the bomb? How could you make a choice and not know everything about it.”

Yes, I made the architecture decision to use YUI without knowing it in detail. However, I believe that sometimes when examining architectures you miss the forest from the trees.

[The philosophy of architectural choices after the jump.]Continue reading →