Question

In an android application, when using DefaultHttpClient to get an URL content (executing HttpGet) I receive the following warning in logs:

W/ResponseProcessCookies(20386): Invalid cookie header: "Set-Cookie: NSC_vbue_iuuq=ffff660; expires=; domain=private.false.name; path=/; isSecure=false". Unable to parse expires attribute:

I understand the warning because the expires field does not contain a valid date format. I understand it maybe because it is a ‘session cookie’ (without being expert). Thread about similar situation in Curl context

Searching the web I found mainly the

.setParameter(ClientPNames.COOKIE_POLICY, CookiePolicy.BEST_MATCH (or other) )

option to avoid warning by parsing correctly dates that contain a comma.

However, I would like to avoid that log. (not by disabling logs)
I believe internally all is fine since “I GUESS”, cookie.setExpiryDate() is simply not called.

Do you think I need a specific configuration of my HTTP client (I’ve not set specific configurations) to avoid that warning or to support empty expires?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you do not mind altering the CookieSpec you can supply your own, more lenient, subclass.

First, create a lenient CookieSpec that will accept null and empty values for the expires attribute, like this:

class LenientCookieSpec extends BrowserCompatSpec {
    public LenientCookieSpec() {
        super();
        registerAttribHandler(ClientCookie.EXPIRES_ATTR, new BasicExpiresHandler(DATE_PATTERNS) {
            @Override public void parse(SetCookie cookie, String value) throws MalformedCookieException {
                if (TextUtils.isEmpty(value)) {
                    // You should set whatever you want in cookie
                    cookie.setExpiryDate(null);
                } else {
                    super.parse(cookie, value);
                }
            }
        });
    }
}

Now you need to register & choose this new CookieSpec in your HTTP client.

DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
client.getCookieSpecs().register("lenient", new CookieSpecFactory() {
        public CookieSpec newInstance(HttpParams params) {
            return new LenientCookieSpec();
        }
    });
HttpClientParams.setCookiePolicy(client.getParams(), "lenient");

Something “like this” could work for you.