I'm trying to do a regular post on useful javascript libraries and plugins to existing frameworks such as jQuery, knockoutJs etc...

So to kick things off, let me introduce jquery.cookie. This usefully little library allows you to get and set cookies on the client side. Now why might you want to do this?

Serve up a generic cached page and personalize based on cookie information (a lot of sites do this, like eBay shows your name, but will still require you to sign in)
Retrieve some information via AJAX and save it to a cookie

I've used this on several projects in the past, and it's nice and easy to use.

Reference the script in your page
Grab a copy from https://github.com/carhartl/jquery-cookie

<script src="/path/pto/jquery.cookie.js"></script>

.Set a cookie

var userProfile = {
    Name: 'Eric Phan',
    Age: 28,
    LastLogin: '2013-04-22 11:24 PM' 
};

var cookieOptions = {
    expires: 7, // expire in 7 days	
    path: '/', // path of the cookie
    domain: 'ericphan.net', // domain the cookie is valid for
    secure: false // whether to transmit the cookie over HTTPS
};

// Need to store the JSON data as string
$.cookie('UserProfile', JSON.stringify(userProfile), cookieOptions);

Get a cookie

var cookie = $.cookie('UserProfile');

// Convert the string value back to JSON
var userProfileData = JSON.parse(cookie);

console.log(userProfileData.Name)

Delete a cookie

$.removeCookie('UserProfile', { path: '/', domain: 'ericphan.info'});

Really simple and easy to use. Props to Klaus Hartl for developing such a handy little plugin.

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Javascript Corner - jquery.cookie