The Java TM Tutorial

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Trail: Servlets

## Lesson: Saving Client State

> The Servlet API provides two ways to track client state:

### Session Tracking

> Session tracking is a mechanism that servlets use to maintain state about a series of requests from the same user (that is, requests originating from the same browser) across some period of time.

### Cookies

> Cookies are a mechanism that a servlet uses to have clients hold a small amount of state-information associated with the user. Servlets can use the information in a cookie as the user enters a site (as a low-security user sign-on, for example), as the user navigates around a site (as a repository of user preferences for example), or both.

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