Question

I’ve seen answers about how this should work with the old DefaultHttpClient
but there’s not a good example for HttpURLConnection

I’m using HttpURLConnection to make requests to a web application. At the start of the my Android application, I use CookieHandler.setDefault(new CookieManager()) to automatically deal with the session cookies, and this is working fine.

At some point after the login, I want to show live pages from the web application to the user with a WebView instead of downloading data behind the scenes with HttpURLConnection. However, I want to use the same session I established earlier to prevent the user from having to login again.

How do I copy the cookies from java.net.CookieManager used by HttpURLConnection to android.webkit.CookieManager used by WebView so I can share the session?

Answer 1

As compared with DefaultHttpClient, there are a few extra steps. The key difference is how to access the existing cookies in HTTPURLConnection:

1. Call CookieHandler.getDefault() and cast the result to java.net.CookieManager.
2. With the cookie manager, call getCookieStore() to access the cookie store.
3. With the cookie store, call get() to access the list of cookies for the given URI.

Here’s a complete example:

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    // Get cookie manager for WebView
    // This must occur before setContentView() instantiates your WebView
    android.webkit.CookieSyncManager webCookieSync =
        CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this);
    android.webkit.CookieManager webCookieManager =
        CookieManager.getInstance();
    webCookieManager.setAcceptCookie(true);

    // Get cookie manager for HttpURLConnection
    java.net.CookieStore rawCookieStore = ((java.net.CookieManager)
        CookieHandler.getDefault()).getCookieStore();

    // Construct URI
    java.net.URI baseUri = null;
    try {
        baseUri = new URI("http://www.example.com");
    } catch (URISyntaxException e) {
        // Handle invalid URI
        ...
    }

    // Copy cookies from HttpURLConnection to WebView
    List<HttpCookie> cookies = rawCookieStore.get(baseUri);
    String url = baseUri.toString();
    for (HttpCookie cookie : cookies) {
        String setCookie = new StringBuilder(cookie.toString())
            .append("; domain=").append(cookie.getDomain())
            .append("; path=").append(cookie.getPath())
            .toString();
        webCookieManager.setCookie(url, setCookie);
    }

    // Continue with onCreate
    ...
}