I have an application that needs to check whether the client browser has third-party-cookies enabled. Does anyone know how to do this in JavaScript?
The third party sets & reads cookies over HTTP (not in JavaScript).
So we need two requests to an external domain to test if third-party cookies are enabled:
We cannot use XMLHTTPRequest (Ajax) because of the DOM security model.
Obviously you can't load both scripts in parallel, or the second request may be made before the first request’s response makes it back, and the test cookie(s) will not have been set.
Given:
The .html
file is on one domain, and
The .js.php
files are on a second domain, we have:
Saved as third-party-cookies.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head id="head">
<meta charset=utf-8 />
<title>Test if Third-Party Cookies are Enabled</title>
<style type="text/css">
body {
color: black;
background: white none;
}
.error {
color: #c00;
}
.loading {
color: #888;
}
.hidden {
display: none;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
window._3rd_party_test_step1_loaded = function(){
// At this point, a third-party domain has now attempted to set a cookie (if all went to plan!)
var step2Url = 'http://third-party.example.com/step2.js.php',
resultsEl = document.getElementById('3rd_party_cookie_test_results'),
step2El = document.createElement('script');
// Update loading / results message
resultsEl.innerHTML = 'Stage one complete, loading stage 2…';
// And load the second part of the test (reading the cookie)
step2El.setAttribute('src', step2Url);
resultsEl.appendChild(step2El);
}
window._3rd_party_test_step2_loaded = function(cookieSuccess){
var resultsEl = document.getElementById('3rd_party_cookie_test_results'),
errorEl = document.getElementById('3rd_party_cookie_test_error');
// Show message
resultsEl.innerHTML = (cookieSuccess ? 'Third party cookies are <b>functioning</b> in your browser.' : 'Third party cookies appear to be <b>disabled</b>.');
// Done, so remove loading class
resultsEl.className = resultsEl.className.replace(/\bloading\b/,' ');
// And remove error message
errorEl.className = 'hidden';
}
</script>
</head>
<body id="thebody">
<h1>Test if Third-Party Cookies are Enabled</h1>
<p id="3rd_party_cookie_test_results" class='loading'>Testing…</p>
<p id="3rd_party_cookie_test_error" class="error hidden">(If this message persists, the test could not be completed; we could not reach the third-party to test, or another error occurred.)</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.setTimeout(function(){
var errorEl = document.getElementById('3rd_party_cookie_test_error');
if(errorEl.className.match(/\berror\b/)) {
// Show error message
errorEl.className = errorEl.className.replace(/\bhidden\b/,' ');
} else {
}
}, 7*1000); // 7 sec timeout
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://third-party.example.com/step1.js.php"></script>
</body>
</html>
Saved as step1.js.php
This is written in PHP so we can set cookies as the file loads. (It could, of course, be written in any language, or even done in server config files.)
<?php
header('Content-Type: application/javascript; charset=UTF-8');
// Set test cookie
setcookie('third_party_c_t', 'hey there!', time() + 3600*24*2);
?>
window._3rd_party_test_step1_loaded();
Saved as step2.js.php
This is written in PHP so we can read cookies, server-side, before we respond. We also clear the cookie so the test can be repeated (if you want to mess around with browser settings and re-try).
<?php
header('Content-Type: application/javascript; charset=UTF-8');
// Read test cookie, if there
$cookie_received = (isset($_COOKIE['third_party_c_t']) && $_COOKIE['third_party_c_t'] == 'hey there!');
// And clear it so the user can test it again
setcookie('third_party_c_t', '', time() - 3600*24);
?>
window._3rd_party_test_step2_loaded(<?php echo ($cookie_received ? 'true' : 'false'); ?>);
The last line uses the ternary operator to output a literal Javascript true
or false
depending on whether the test cookie was present.
Available for your testing pleasure at https://alanhogan.github.io/web-experiments/3rd/third-party-cookies.html.
(As a final note — don’t use someone else’s server to test third-party cookies without their permission. It could break spontaneously or inject malware. And it’s rude.)
My solution works by loading a <script> from an external domain that sets a cookie, checks if it was successful, and then passes the result (1 or 0) as an argument to a callback function.
The HTML:
<script>
function myCallback(is_enabled) {
if (is_enabled===1) {//third party cookies are enabled
}
}
</script>
<script src="https://third-party-domain/third-party-cookies.php?callback=myCallback"></script>
If you prefer to run it asynchronously, you may use the async and defer attributes.
This also works with jQuery:
<script>
$.ajax({
url: 'https://third-party-domain/third-party-cookies.php',
dataType: 'jsonp',
}).done(function(is_enabled) {
if (is_enabled===1) {//third party cookies are enabled
}
})
</script>
Here is the third-party-cookies.php code. This must be hosted on a different domain. The server must support PHP:
<?php
header('Cache-Control: no-store');
header('Content-Type: text/javascript');
if ($_GET['callback']=='') {
echo 'alert("Error: A callback function must be specified.")';
}
elseif (!isset($_GET['cookieName'])) {// Cookie not set yet
$cookieName = strtr((string)$_SERVER['UNIQUE_ID'], '@', '_');
while (isset($_COOKIE[$cookieName]) || $cookieName=='') {
$cookieName = dechex(mt_rand());// Get random cookie name
}
setcookie($cookieName, '3rd-party', 0, '/');
header('Location: '.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].'&cookieName='.$cookieName);
}
elseif ($_COOKIE[$_GET['cookieName']]=='3rd-party') {// Third party cookies are enabled.
setcookie($_GET['cookieName'], '', -1, '/'); // delete cookie
echo $_GET['callback'].'(1)';
}
else {// Third party cookies are not enabled.
echo $_GET['callback'].'(0)';
}
In theory you'd just have a page call out somewhere that would set a thirdparty cookie and then check for that cookie's existence. However, standard browser security does not allow scripts from domain A to do anything with cookies set on domains B,C,etc... e.g. you can't access "foreign" cookies.
If you have some specific usage in mind, such as checking if ads are blocked (which would also block the 3rd party tracking cookie), you could check if the ad server's content is within the page's DOM, but you couldn't see if the cookie's there.
Third Party Cookie detection with Whitelisting of URLs
Alan H & Gojko Adzic are good enough for majority of use cases, but these solutions won't work if you want your users to do whitelisting of third party cookies only to certain domains.
I'm presenting a slightly modified version of Gojko Adzic's answer
For this we need two domains :
tpc=pending
, then it redirects to Domain 2tpc=true
and redirects back to Domain 1tpc
and checks if its true
, if we get value as true, third party cookies are allowed if it is still in pending
third party cookies are blocked blocked.Now, you might ask your users to whitelist (allow third party cookies) ONLY for Domain 1
, also by this technique third party detection will be accurate
if the users had white listed your domain.
This is tested in Chrome 74, 75, 76 & Edge 78
Unfortunately, Mozilla doesn't provide whitelisting of urls like Chrome does and Safari has it own mechanisms of detecting third party cookies (ITP).
P.S. Will upload this demo in my github when I get time.
⚠️ Update: Multiple browsers are now implementing stricter privacy controls that may cause this test to give a "false negative" result, meaning that it will conclude that third-party cookies are disabled when they may in fact be enabled but blocked in use-cases similar to that of the test.
Here's a pure JS solution not requiring any server-side code, so it can work from a static CDN: https://github.com/mindmup/3rdpartycookiecheck - the first script sets the cookie in the code, then redirects to a second script that will post a message to the parent window.
You can try out a live version using https://jsfiddle.net/tugawg8y/
client-side HTML:
third party cookies are <span id="result"/>
<iframe src="https://mindmup.github.io/3rdpartycookiecheck/start.html"
style="display:none" />
client-side JS:
var receiveMessage = function (evt) {
if (evt.data === 'MM:3PCunsupported') {
document.getElementById('result').innerHTML = 'not supported';
} else if (evt.data === 'MM:3PCsupported') {
document.getElementById('result').innerHTML = 'supported';
}
};
window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);
Of course, this requires that the client runs JavaScript which is a downside compared to the server-based solutions; on the other hand, it's simpler, and you were asking about a JS solution.
Alan's solution is great, but you don't have to use PHP or any other server-side programming language.
At least if you use nginx. :)
This is a pure* nginx server-side configuration for Alan's solution:
server {
listen 80;
server_name third-party.example.com
# don't allow user's browser to cache these replies
expires -1;
add_header Cache-Control "private";
etag off;
location = /step1.js.php {
add_header Content-Type 'application/javascript; charset=UTF-8';
add_header Set-Cookie "third_party_c_t=hey there!;Max-Age=172800";
return 200 'window._3rd_party_test_step1_loaded();';
}
location = /step2.js.php {
add_header Content-Type 'application/javascript; charset=UTF-8';
set $test 'false';
if ($cookie_third_party_c_t = 'hey there!') {
set $test 'true';
# clear the cookie
add_header Set-Cookie "third_party_c_t=;expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT";
}
return 200 'window._3rd_party_test_step2_loaded($test);';
}
}
Side notes:
third-party-cookies.html
),server
section (scope) of the config - I have kept it this way for the keep it more "1:1" translation.