Not really. The complete-state-in-a-form method allows for easy session forking. It also allows users to undo state transitions by backing up into the browser history. Cookies don't support either of these.

Session forking isn't that hard with IDs (whether cookie or URL based). Just have the ID index into a tree of state transitions on the server side. It's something I've done on several sites (and I've a vague memory that somebody has implemented a CPAN module that makes doing this fairly simple, but am to lazy to go find it :-)

Keeping the state server side can be handy, and having a small ID means I can stick it in a URL and have a more RESTful bookmarkable API.

In reply to Re^3: If you do away with server-side state, you don't need cookies by adrianh
in thread "omniscient debugging" for Perl by spurperl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.