What options do I have for storing customers basket contents on my website outside of their session?

Question

As the title says: What options do I have for storing customers basket contents on my website outside of their session and not logged in to an account?

I do not want to have to request permission for cookies use (EU law). From what I understand, using a cookie to store the basket contents longer than session long, would mean a 'persistent cookie' which requires permission from the visitor before use, clarification would be useful here. If that is the case, then I don't want to go down the cookie route of asking permission.

I'm wondering if there is some way of doing it via our database, if that is possible how would it record to that unique visitor, I can only think of that it might record an IP address perhaps if that is allowed without gaining prior permission.

I have noticed other websites doing exactly this without asking for permission to use cookies, so I can only assume there is indeed another way!

If I have answered my own question, please clarify the above points to avoid any confusion.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

If you want to link any kind of information that is in your DB, basket case for example, to every single customer, you have to identify him.

You can identify him writing a unique id on the server for example, MAC address or IP address(?) or writing a cookie on his client, and again referring to it in your server.

I can't see any other way.

And the meaning of the cookie law is just that to do it, you need the user approval, for this reason I'm quite sure that you can't do this without breaking EU laws.