difference between cookie and string in request header

Question

Cookie is nothing but a small piece of information most of the times a string in the request header send by the client to server. If i add one more string to the request header at server in java like conn.addRequestProperty("iPlanetDirectoryPro", token); then is there any difference between the two? Can the second one be also considered as a cookie.

Regards,

Maclean Maurice Pinto

Answer 1

You'll want to read the HTTP specification (message headers) and the HTTP State Management specification.

The HTTP specification provides message headers

Each header field consists of a name followed by a colon (":") and the field value.

For example, you could have

Content-Length:42

This is a header.

The HTTP State Management specification defines the Cookie and Set-Cookie headers. Those are two specific headers that are used for achieving state in HTTP request and response cycles (HTTP is a stateless protocol).

So

conn.addRequestProperty("iPlanetDirectoryPro", token); then is there any difference between the two?

Yes, there is a big difference. The above is a simple request header. It has nothing to do with a Cookie.