Sending cookies using HttpCookieCollection and CookieContainer

Question

I want to tunnel through an HTTP request from my server to a remote server, passing through all the cookies. So I create a new HttpWebRequest object and want to set cookies on it.

HttpWebRequest.CookieContainer is type System.Net.CookieContainer which holds System.Net.Cookies.

On my incoming request object:

HttpRequest.Cookies is type System.Web.HttpCookieCollection which holds System.Web.HttpCookies.

Basically I want to be able to assign them to each other, but the differing types makes it impossible. Do I have to convert them by copying their values, or is there a better way?

Solution 1

Here's the code I've used to transfer the cookie objects from the incoming request to the new HttpWebRequest... ("myRequest" is the name of my HttpWebRequest object.)

HttpCookieCollection oCookies = Request.Cookies;
for ( int j = 0; j < oCookies.Count; j++ ) 
{
    HttpCookie oCookie = oCookies.Get( j );
    Cookie oC = new Cookie();

    // Convert between the System.Net.Cookie to a System.Web.HttpCookie...
    oC.Domain   = myRequest.RequestUri.Host;
    oC.Expires  = oCookie.Expires;
    oC.Name     = oCookie.Name;
    oC.Path     = oCookie.Path;
    oC.Secure   = oCookie.Secure;
    oC.Value    = oCookie.Value;

    myRequest.CookieContainer.Add( oC );
}

Solution 2

I had a need to do this today for a SharePoint site which uses Forms Based Authentication (FBA). If you try and call an application page without cloning the cookies and assigning a CookieContainer object then the request will fail.

I chose to abstract the job to this handy extension method:

public static CookieContainer GetCookieContainer(this System.Web.HttpRequest SourceHttpRequest, System.Net.HttpWebRequest TargetHttpWebRequest)
    {
        System.Web.HttpCookieCollection sourceCookies = SourceHttpRequest.Cookies;
        if (sourceCookies.Count == 0)
            return null;
        else
        {
            CookieContainer cookieContainer = new CookieContainer();
            for (int i = 0; i < sourceCookies.Count; i++)                
            {
                System.Web.HttpCookie cSource = sourceCookies[i];
                Cookie cookieTarget = new Cookie() { Domain = TargetHttpWebRequest.RequestUri.Host, 
                                                     Name = cSource.Name, 
                                                     Path = cSource.Path, 
                                                     Secure = cSource.Secure, 
                                                     Value = cSource.Value };
                cookieContainer.Add(cookieTarget);
            }
            return cookieContainer;
        }
    }

You can then just call it from any HttpRequest object with a target HttpWebRequest object as a parameter, for example:

HttpWebRequest request;                
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(TargetUrl);
request.Method = "GET";
request.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
request.CookieContainer = SourceRequest.GetCookieContainer(request);                
request.BeginGetResponse(null, null);

where TargetUrl is the Url of the page I am after and SourceRequest is the HttpRequest of the page I am on currently, retrieved via Page.Request.

Solution 3

The suggested from David is the right one. You need to copy. Just simply create function to copy repeatedly. HttpCookie and Cookie object is created to make sure we can differentiate both in its functionality and where it come. HttpCookie used between user and your proxy Cookie is used between your proxy and remote web server.

HttpCookie has less functionality since the cookie is originated from you and you know how to handle it. Cookie provide you to manage cookie received from web server. Like CookieContainer, it can be used to manage domain, path and expiry.

So user side and web server side is different and to connect it, sure you need to convert it. In your case, it just simply direct assignment.

Notice that CookieContainer has a bug on .Add(Cookie) and .GetCookies(uri) method.

See the details and fix here:

http://dot-net-expertise.blogspot.com/2009/10/cookiecontainer-domain-handling-bug-fix.html

CallMeLaNN