Say I have a website, www.example, with a login box which sits in an iframe situated in api.example. My question is:

1. Is it possible to pass cookie data from the inner iframe (api.example to the website, so the website knows when the user logged in?
2. Is it possible to do this client-side, without the need to refresh the whole page? How would the fact that user logged in be passed to the website?

Any solution which works on FF and IE 6/7 would be great.

Say I have a website, www.example., with a login box which sits in an iframe situated in api.example.. My question is:

1. Is it possible to pass cookie data from the inner iframe (api.example. to the website, so the website knows when the user logged in?
2. Is it possible to do this client-side, without the need to refresh the whole page? How would the fact that user logged in be passed to the website?

Any solution which works on FF and IE 6/7 would be great.

• php
• javascript
• apache
• iframe
• cookies

• Please add tag for your serverside platform – AnthonyWJones Commented Jan 18, 2009 at 8:37

2 Answers 2

You don't have to pass the cookie between them. You need to write the cookie to the right domain though.

Response.Cookies("COOKIENAME").Domain = ".example."
Response.Cookies("COOKIENAME").Value= "foo"

A cookie can be shared between two domains like api.example. and www.example. by having the server specify the cookie domain to be simply example.. This makes the cookie available to both sub-domains.

FF3 and IE8 support then postMessage standard which allow windows(frames) in different domains to talk to each other. However for IE6/7 you would need an AJAX call to the server to get what ever login confirmation you need but tricky thing would be knowing how to trigger such a request.