GreaseMonkey and Cross Domain Cookies

I hit a small problem tonight, I wanted to make it possible for a GreaseMonkey Javascript running on one domain, to publish data to another site using GM_xmlHttpRequest.

The problem was cookies. In order to recognise the person posting, the site requires cookies, and that’s just something XHR can’t manage outright by itself. So, I devised a better strategy.

Using GM_setValue, I checked the location in the script to ensure it matches where I want the Cookies to be stored from, and set the value of MyCookie to document.cookie.

Then, when it comes time for a request to be sent, in the XHR, I add a header: Cookie: GM_getValue(“MyCookie”). This fetches the cookie from the script settings, and sets it as the cookie for the request.

Then, it was just a simple task of encoding my data, and sending the request.

This is of course a friendly reminder to ensure you only install scripts you trust, else you might find someone catching your cookie data and using it for undesired purposes.