Cookies and HttpWebRequest

[Brian Delahunty]

Hey Lads, I'm using HttpWebRequest in a thick client application and just wondering if there is a simple way to get the request to automatically include an IE cookie??? Regards, Brian Dela :-) http://www.briandela.com IE 6 required.
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[Heath Stewart]

Not through the BCL, no. You can P/Invoke InternetGetCookie:

[DllImport("wininet.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern bool InternetGetCookie(
string url,
string cookieName,
[Out] string cookieData,
ref int dataSize);

That third parameter should not use out, mind you - it should be marshaled as an [out] param using the OutAttribute only, otherwise the CLR will crash. See the Platform SDK for usage, but it's really pretty easy to do. To easily allocate a string of a certain size, you can use new string('\0', _size_) or declare those as StringBuilders and modify your source accordingly. Then you can parse and include these in your CookieContainer for use with the HttpWebRequest.

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