Sessions – Automated Hacks

Chapter 87: Before the Social Graph—How 1995–1998 Web Scripting and CGI Set the Stage for Facebook Platform APIs

Long before Facebook exposed a social graph to developers, the web learned how to pass identity, state, and structured inputs through HTML forms, CGI scripts, cookies, and early JavaScript. This chapter traces the 1995–1998 API-shaped habits that later became essential to Facebook Platform APIs.

Chapter 75: Cookies, Sessions, and Stateful Web Apps (1995–1998)—How Early Web APIs Learned to Remember

Between 1995 and 1998, web APIs moved from one-shot CGI responses to stateful experiences. This chapter traces how forms, URL parameters, early JavaScript, cookies, and server-side sessions taught the web to remember users.

Chapter 5: Cookies, Sessions, and the First Attempts at Stateful Web APIs (1990–1994)

In the Web’s earliest years, HTTP’s stateless design collided with real application needs: logins, carts, personalization, and workflow. This chapter traces how developers improvised sessions and how cookies began to emerge around 1994.