Can't get AddCookie() to work (ifHttpAgent)

Archived
1

I can’t seem to be able to get cookies working on an roVideoPlayer object (implements ifHttpAgent). I have mocked up some really simple code to try to narrow it down, but even my stripped down code doesn’t work as expected. Does anyone have a working example of AddCookie(), or some pointers to share?

Here’s what I have tried:


player = CreateObject("roVideoPlayer")
expires = CreateObject("roDateTime")
expires.FromSeconds( expires.asSeconds() + 3600 )

' Using an empty string domain (If domain is an empty string, all domains are matched)
player.AddCookies([{version:1, name:"thecookie", value:"the value", domain: "", path:"/", expires: expires}])

 ' This should print an roArray containing one roAssociativeArray element - instead it prints an empty roArray
Print "player.getCookies(): " player.getCookies(".google.com", "/")
2

Make sure you call player.EnableCookies() first.

Also, AddCookies() has a Boolean return code. It returns False if the call fails, e.g. because you haven’t called EnableCookies().

3

Thanks - I tried again after inserting player.EnableCookies() before adding cookies … it did affect the boolean value returned by AddCookie() (true if cookies are enabled, false otherwise), but GetCookies() is still returning empty.

I don’t think the behavior is caused by a flawed call to GetCookies(): I tested the same logic against a server while monitoring http traffic and the cookie header isn’t showing there either

4

Do this return anything: player.getCookies(“”, “/”)

I was also wondering whether you had the domain correct “.google.com” perhaps should be “google.com”

5

Here’s my general flow for adding previously stored cookies to a new roUrlTransfer object:


' Getting some useful cookies
Function login(hostname As String)
   http = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
   http.SetUrl("http://" + hostname + "/...")
   http.EnableCookies()
   http.AsyncPostFromString(...)
   '... wait for response
   http.GetCookies(hostname, "/")
End Function

' Using those cookies later
Function usecookies(hostname As String)
   http = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
   http.SetUrl("http://" + hostname + "/...")
   http.EnableCookies()
   http.AddCookies(cookies)
   http.AsyncGetToString()
   ...
End Function

This works for me after a little trial and error. I believe the key is to make sure the hostname lines up everywhere. If you are setting a cookie for an empty domain, it may ignore it or at least not return it when you ask for cookies from a different domain. Cookie domain matching is a security-sensitive subject. Another hint is that we know it’s libcurl under the covers. Looking at curl’s documentation on cookie management might give more insight.

6

OK thanks for all the help. I got it to work with 2 changes overall
• EnableCookie() doc says “Causes any Set-Cookie headers returned from the request to be interpreted and the resulting cookies to be added to the cookie cache” - but it turns out to be necessary also when adding cookies manually via AddCookie()
• Empty domain names make sense for GetCookies(), but don’t make sense for AddCookies()

Here is a working version of the code


        expires = CreateObject("roDateTime")
        expires.FromSeconds( expires.asSeconds() + 3600 )
        cookie = {version:1, name:"thecookies", value:"thevalue", domain: domain, path:path, expires: expires}

        player = CreateObject("roVideoPlayer")
        player.EnableCookies()
        player.AddCookies([cookie])
        player = http.GetCookies("", "/")
        if cookies.count() = 1
            Print "YEP"
        else
            Print "NOPE"
        end if