CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION(3)

CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION3

Start a new cookie session

Usage

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, long init);

Overview

Pass a long set to 1 to mark this as a new cookie "session". It forces libcurl to ignore all cookies it is about to load that are "session cookies" from the previous session. By default, libcurl always loads all cookies, independent if they are session cookies or not. Session cookies are cookies without expiry date and they are meant to be alive and existing for this "session" only.

A "session" is usually defined in browser land for as long as you have your browser up, more or less. libcurl needs the application to use this option to tell it when a new session starts, otherwise it assumes everything is still in the same session.

Default

0

Protocols

This functionality affects http only

Examples

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/foo.bin");
    /* new "session", do not load session cookies */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, 1L);
    /* get the (non session) cookies from this file */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "/tmp/cookies.txt");
    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

Return value

curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).

Releases

7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.

  1. 8
  2. 9
  3. 10
  4. 11
  5. 12
  6. 13
  7. Arch

Availability

Added in curl 7.9.7

From curl 8.23.0-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.