Consuming web service & storing cookies

Question

This method is used to consume a web service which I also control. The web service sets cookies to keep the user logged in.

This all works fine through a browser. i.e. I can call the login url, it will cookie my browser, and subsequent access to the web service recognizes my cookies.

In android, I can get a successful return on my login, but the cookies do not seem to be setting.

You can see where this code prints the cookie data to the output. It prints the cookie when it hits the login script, but for subsequent calls to this function, it does not recognize the cookie anymore.

Here's the code I'm using, I started from an example someone else posted:

private JSONObject getResponse(String func, List<NameValuePair> args) throws Exception {

    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    try {
        // Create a local instance of cookie store
        CookieStore cookieStore = new BasicCookieStore();

        // Create local HTTP context
        HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
        // Bind custom cookie store to the local context
        localContext.setAttribute(ClientContext.COOKIE_STORE, cookieStore);

        HttpPost put= new HttpPost("http://example.com/api/" + func);
        if (args != null) {
            put.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(args));
        }

        System.out.println("executing request " + put.getURI());

        // Pass local context as a parameter
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(put, localContext);
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

        System.out.println("----------------------------------------");
        System.out.println(response.getStatusLine());
        if (entity != null) {
            System.out.println("Response content length: " + entity.getContentLength());
        }
        List<Cookie> cookies = cookieStore.getCookies();
        for (int i = 0; i < cookies.size(); i++) {
            System.out.println("Local cookie: " + cookies.get(i));
        }

        // Consume response content
        //EntityUtils.consume(entity);
        System.out.println("----------------------------------------");

        InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
        String result = convertStreamToString(instream);
        instream.close();
        entity.consumeContent();

        System.out.println("JSON Output: " + result);

        return new JSONObject(result);

    } finally {
        // When HttpClient instance is no longer needed,
        // shut down the connection manager to ensure
        // immediate deallocation of all system resources
        httpclient.getConnectionManager().shutdown();
    }
}

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '11 at 17:10

3

That might be because your HttpClient and CookieStore are local to getResponse. Try making them global so they persist onto subsequent calls.

answered Jul 19 '11 at 17:10

Torid

4,176
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score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

When you are trying to access locked content on a url call you need to manually set a cookie for the next coming call, which can be done using:

HttpURLConnection httpURLConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
httpURLConnection.setInstanceFollowRedirects(false);

httpURLConnection.setRequestProperty("Host", domainOfYourCookie);
httpURLConnection.setRequestProperty("Cookie", valueOfYourCookie);

I have written another answer regarding this topic, which you can find here.

Consuming web service & storing cookies

2 Answers2