HttpWebRequest and Set-Cookie header in response not parsed (WP7)

Question

I am trying to get the header "Set-Cookie" or access the cookie container, but the Set-Cookie header is not available. The cookie is in the response header, but it's not there in the client request object. I am registering the ClientHttp stack using

bool httpResult = WebRequest.RegisterPrefix("http://", WebRequestCreator.ClientHttp);

Here's the response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
Status: 200
X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 3.0.0.pre4
ETag: "39030a9c5a45a24e485e4d2fb06c6389"
Client-Version: 312, 105, 0, 0
X-Runtime: 44
Content-Length: 1232
Set-Cookie: _CWFServer_session=[This is the session data]; path=/; HttpOnly
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Server: nginx/0.7.67 + Phusion Passenger 3.0.0.pre4 (mod_rails/mod_rack)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<user>
...
</user>

My callback code contains something like:

var webRequest = (HttpWebRequest)result.AsyncState;
raw = webRequest.EndGetResponse(result) as HttpWebResponse;
foreach (Cookie c in webRequest.CookieContainer.GetCookies(webRequest.RequestUri))
{
    Console.WriteLine("Cookie['" + c.Name + "']: " + c.Value);
}

I've also tried looking at the headers but Set-Cookie header isn't present in the response either.

Any suggestions on what may be the problem?

Answer 1

Try explicitly passing a new CookieContainer:

CookieContainer container = new CookieContainer();
container.Add(new Uri("http://yoursite"), new Cookie("name", "value"));
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://yoursite");
request.CookieContainer = container;
request.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(GetData), request);

Answer 2

You are receiving HttpOnly cookies:

Set-Cookie: _CWFServer_session=[This is the session data]; path=/; HttpOnly 

For security reasons, those cookies can't be accessed from code, but you still can use them in your next calls to HttpWebRequest. More on this here : Reading HttpOnly Cookies from Headers of HttpWebResponse in Windows Phone

With WP7.1, I also had problems reading non HttpOnly cookies. I found out that they are not available if the response of the HttpWebRequest comes from the cache. Making the query unique with a random number solved the cache problem :

// The Request
Random random = new Random();  
// UniqueQuery is used to defeat the cache system that destroys the cookie.
_uniqueQuery = "http://my-site.somewhere?someparameters=XXX"
       + ";test="+ random.Next();

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(_uniqueQuery);
request.BeginGetResponse(Response_Completed, request);

Once you get the response, you can fetch the cookie from the response headers:

void Response_Completed(IAsyncResult result)
{
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)result.AsyncState;
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.EndGetResponse(result);
    String header = response.Headers["Set-Cookie"]; 

I never managed to get the CookieContainer.GetCookies() method to work.

Answer 3

Is the cookie httponly? If so, you won't be able to see it, but if you use the same CookieContainer for your second request, the request will contain the cookie, even though your program won't be able to see it.

Answer 4

You must edit the headers collection directly. Something like this:

request.Headers["Set-Cookie"] = "name=value";

request.BeginGetResponse(myCallback, request);