protected function parseCookies(): array
    {
        # cookies are encoded in the `cookie` header
        $header = $this->getHeader("cookie");
        if (empty($header)) {
            return [];
        }

        # create a data collection to gracefully handle arrays
        $options = $this->getDecoderOptions();
        $collection = new \sndsgd\http\data\Collection(
            $options->getMaxVars(),
            $options->getMaxNestingLevels()
        );

        foreach (explode(";", $header) as $cookie) {
            $cookie = trim($cookie);
            if ($cookie === "") {
                continue;
            }

            $pair = explode("=", $cookie, 2);
            if (!isset($pair[1]) || $pair[1] === "") {
                continue;
            }

            list($key, $value) = $pair;
            $collection->addValue(urldecode($key), urldecode($value));
        }

        return $collection->getValues();
    }