Persistant Client State in a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Based Client-Server System

• US 20070192435A1
• Filed: 04/18/2007
• Published: 08/16/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/06/1995
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Lou Montulli
• Original Assignee: Lou Montulli
• Inventors: Montulli, Lou
• Application Number:
  US11/737,043
• Publication Number:
  US 20070192435A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/218
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0603 Catalogue ordering
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/142 Managing session states for stateless protocols; Signalling session states; State transitions; Keeping-state mechanisms

Abstract

A method and apparatus for transferring state information between a server computer system and a client computer system. In one embodiment of the method, an http client requests a file, such as an HTML document, on an http server, and the http server transmits the file to the http client. In addition, the http server transmits a state object, which describes certain state information, to the http client. The http client stores the state object, and will typically send the state object back to the http server when making later requests for files on the http server. In a typical embodiment, the state object includes a domain attribute which specifies a domain or network address, and the state object is transmitted from the http client to a server only when the http client makes an http request to the server and the server is within the domain. In one embodiment, the apparatus includes a processor and memory and a computer readable medium which stores program instructions. In the case of the client system, the instructions specify operations such as receiving and storing the state information; in the case of the server system, the instructions specify operations such as sending the state information to a client system.

Claims

1. A method for transferring information between a client and a server, the method comprising:

receiving, at a server, a first request for a first document from a client;

communicating, from the server to the client in response to the first request, the first document and a text string that includes a name-value pair and a domain attribute defining a domain of the server;

receiving, at the server, a second request for a second document from the client; and

receiving, at the server and with the second request, the text string -only when the second request for the second document is made within the domain of the server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the name-value pair of the text string includes a user identifier.

3. A method for transferring information between a client and a server, the method comprising:

receiving, at a server and from a client, a first request for a first document;

communicating, from the server, the first document to the client in response to the first request;

communicating, from the server and with the first document, a text string that includes a name-value pair defining a user identifier to be stored on the client; and

receiving, at the server, a second request for a second document from the client; and

receiving, at the server and with the request for the second document, the text string only when the second request is made to the server within a domain from which the text string was communicated to the client.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the name-value part of the text string includes a user identifier.