Question

I’m making a wrapper for a forum API, one function returns this, which is meant to provide enough information for you to set a cookie to log the user in with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>    
<ApiResponse>    
 <ErrorCode>0</ErrorCode>    
 <ErrorDescription/>    
 <ResultData recordcount="1">    
  <Record>  
   <Username>Gullanian</Username>    
   <UserID>4</UserID>    
   <CookieName>WWF9sLID</CookieName>    
   <CookieKey>UID</CookieKey>    
   <CookieData>Gullanian-CD45-ZCB-D72Z-AAC6</CookieData>    
   <CookiePath>/scirranew/forum/</CookiePath>
   <ForumPath>http://127.0.0.1/scirranew/Forum/</ForumPath> 
  </Record>    
 </ResultData>    
</ApiResponse>

I’ve got as far as this:

public class WebWizCookie
{
    public string Username { get; set; }
    public int UserID { get; set; }
    public string CookieName { get; set; }
    public string CookieKey { get; set; }
    public string CookieData { get; set; }
    public string CookiePath { get; set; }
    public string ForumPath { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Loads this cookie so user is logged in with this cookie data.
    /// </summary>
    public void LoadCookie(double MinutesExpiry)
    {
        HttpCookie Cookie = new HttpCookie(this.CookieName);
        Cookie[this.CookieKey] = this.CookieData;
        Cookie.Domain = this.CookiePath;
        Cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(MinutesExpiry);

        HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(Cookie);
    }

It’s returning all the values fine, but I’m not being logged into the site when I call this function. Does anyone know if I’m doing anything wrong here? Forgetting to set something, or setting it incorrectly?

Edit, printing out values

After setting the cookie, if I print out the values:

HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("Cookie[" + this.CookieKey + "] = " + this.CookieData + "<br />");
HttpContext.Current.Response.Write("Cookie.Domain = " + ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["MasterDomainRoot"] + "<br />");

I get:

Cookie[UID] = Gullanian2-4B9B-9D5-27E2-A413
Cookie.Domain = http://localhost/ScirraNew
UID

And in google chrome the developer tools says there is a cookie:

Answer 1

Your Cookie.Domain is wrong. See HttpCookie.Domain on MSDN – it should merely contain the domain (e.g. “localhost”) not the full path (“http://localhost/ScirraNew”). There is a Path property if you want to restrict a cookie to only certain parts of your site, but that is a rarely-used feature (I’ve never come across a reason to do it).

By the way, you don’t need to set the Domain property – by default, cookies are shared by all pages that are in the same domain. You really only need to set it if you have to share cookies between different subdomains (e.g. http://www.mysite.com and secure.mysite.com, you’d need to set Domain to “mysite.com”)