Cookie plugin
 
  Copyright (c) 2006 Klaus Hartl (stilbuero.de)
  Dual licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses
  httpwww.opensource.orglicensesmit-license.php
  httpwww.gnu.orglicensesgpl.html
 
 


  Create a cookie with the given name and value and other optional parameters.
 
  @example $.cookie('the_cookie', 'the_value');
  @desc Set the value of a cookie.
  @example $.cookie('the_cookie', 'the_value', { expires 7, path '', domain 'jquery.com', secure true });
  @desc Create a cookie with all available options.
  @example $.cookie('the_cookie', 'the_value');
  @desc Create a session cookie.
  @example $.cookie('the_cookie', null);
  @desc Delete a cookie by passing null as value. Keep in mind that you have to use the same path and domain
        used when the cookie was set.
 
  @param String name The name of the cookie.
  @param String value The value of the cookie.
  @param Object options An object literal containing keyvalue pairs to provide optional cookie attributes.
  @option NumberDate expires Either an integer specifying the expiration date from now on in days or a Date object.
                              If a negative value is specified (e.g. a date in the past), the cookie will be deleted.
                              If set to null or omitted, the cookie will be a session cookie and will not be retained
                              when the the browser exits.
  @option String path The value of the path atribute of the cookie (default path of page that created the cookie).
  @option String domain The value of the domain attribute of the cookie (default domain of page that created the cookie).
  @option Boolean secure If true, the secure attribute of the cookie will be set and the cookie transmission will
                         require a secure protocol (like HTTPS).
  @type undefined
 
  @name $.cookie
  @cat PluginsCookie
  @author Klaus Hartlklaus.hartl@stilbuero.de
 


  Get the value of a cookie with the given name.
 
  @example $.cookie('the_cookie');
  @desc Get the value of a cookie.
 
  @param String name The name of the cookie.
  @return The value of the cookie.
  @type String
 
  @name $.cookie
  @cat PluginsCookie
  @author Klaus Hartlklaus.hartl@stilbuero.de
 
jQuery.cookie = function(name, value, options) {
    if (typeof value != 'undefined') {  name and value given, set cookie
        options = options  {};
        if (value === null) {
            value = '';
            options = $.extend({}, options);  clone object since it's unexpected behavior if the expired property were changed
            options.expires = -1;
        }
        var expires = '';
        if (options.expires && (typeof options.expires == 'number'  options.expires.toUTCString)) {
            var date;
            if (typeof options.expires == 'number') {
                date = new Date();
                date.setTime(date.getTime() + (options.expires  24  60  60  1000));
            } else {
                date = options.expires;
            }
            expires = '; expires=' + date.toUTCString();  use expires attribute, max-age is not supported by IE
        }
         NOTE Needed to parenthesize options.path and options.domain
         in the following expressions, otherwise they evaluate to undefined
         in the packed version for some reason...
        var path = options.path  '; path=' + (options.path)  '';
        var domain = options.domain  '; domain=' + (options.domain)  '';
        var secure = options.secure  '; secure'  '';
        document.cookie = [name, '=', encodeURIComponent(value), expires, path, domain, secure].join('');
    } else {  only name given, get cookie
        var cookieValue = null;
        if (document.cookie && document.cookie != '') {
            var cookies = document.cookie.split(';');
            for (var i = 0; i  cookies.length; i++) {
                var cookie = jQuery.trim(cookies[i]);
                 Does this cookie string begin with the name we want
                if (cookie.substring(0, name.length + 1) == (name + '=')) {
                    cookieValue = decodeURIComponent(cookie.substring(name.length + 1));
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return cookieValue;
    }
};