Applet cookie access and retrieval

[Greg Davies]

Hi,

I have an applet and I am testing some slightly modified code from the documentation (at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/doingMoreWithRIA/accessingCookies.html). The plan is to set a cookie and retrieve all cookies for the URL. Then it prints them out.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell the cookie is not being added. When I print 'cookieJar.getCookie()' immediately after the add method its there, but when I run the code a second time, it does not print out any cookies in the first half of the code. It appears to print out cookies for http://www.sun.com, which is why I think it is not adding.

Basically I want it to add a cookie which I can retrieve later, but I cannot seem to add the cookie. Does anyone know how I can do this?

I have my policy file set as 'permission java.security.AllPermission;'. I am running this in appletviewer at the moment. This method uses the java.net package for cookies as opposed to the netscape package to control javascript. I figured it would be easier to use an existing package than download another one. The code is below.

try {
	// Instantiate CookieManager; make sure to set CookiePolicy
	CookieManager manager = new CookieManager();
	manager.setCookiePolicy(CookiePolicy.ACCEPT_ALL);
	CookieHandler.setDefault(manager);

	// get content from URLConnection; cookies are set by web site
	//URL url = new URL("http://www.sun.com");
	URL url = applet.getCodeBase();
	URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
	connection.getContent();

	// get cookies from underlying CookieStore
	CookieStore cookieJar = manager.getCookieStore();
	java.util.List<HttpCookie>  cookies = cookieJar.getCookies();
	for (HttpCookie cookie: cookies) {
		System.out.println("CookieHandler retrieved cookie: " + cookie);
	}
} catch(Exception e) {
	System.out.println("Unable to get cookie using CookieHandler");
	e.printStackTrace();
}
try {
	// instantiate CookieManager
	CookieManager manager = new CookieManager();
	CookieHandler.setDefault(manager);
	CookieStore cookieJar = manager.getCookieStore();

	// create cookie
	HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("UserName", "John Doe");

	// add cookie to CookieStore for a particular URL
	//URL url = new URL("http://www.sun.com");
	URL url = applet.getCodeBase();
	cookieJar.add(url.toURI(), cookie);
	System.out.println("Added cookie using cookie handler");
} catch(Exception e) {
	System.out.println("Unable to set cookie using CookieHandler");
	e.printStackTrace();
}

Thanks for any help.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Welcome to JavaRanch.

I've never used any of the involved classes, but from my reading of the javadocs it sounds like "new CookieManager()" stores cookies in-memory, i.e., in a transient fashion. Try the other CookieManager constructor which supplies a CookieStore.

[Greg Davies]

I think you're implying that I need to create a new class to implement the CookieStore interface. I'll give that a try.

Before I do that though, I had an idea. Is there the possibility that appletviewer does not have the same cookie-handling capabilities as a browser? The reason I ask is that's where the applet is running at the moment.

Furthermore, do I need to work out how to store cookies somewhere client-side from within the cookie-storing object? If so I still need to work out how to do that. In the meantime I'll try using a map or something. I'll post my findings here.

Thanks

[Ulf Dittmer]

Is there the possibility that appletviewer does not have the same cookie-handling capabilities as a browser? The reason I ask is that's where the applet is running at the moment.

I'm fairly certain that appletviewer does not store cookies persistently (I'm not actually sure if it stores cookies even temporarily in memory...)

[Greg Davies]

I'm fairly certain that appletviewer does not store cookies persistently (I'm not actually sure if it stores cookies even temporarily in memory...)

I'll probably put cookie experiments on hold until I set up an efficient way to test applets in a browser. A subject for another thread perhaps .