Handling Cookies with Redirects and HttpWebRequest

The HttpWebRequest handles redirects automatically. That's usually a nice feature but it can actually get in the way when the web server is setting cookies in the same response in which it is sending a redirect. For some odd reason the HttpWebRequest object will totally discard cookies that are set with a redirect response. I ran into a problem with this when I was working in some code that interfaced to Google Voice and it was driving me crazy since I didn't know where the problem was coming from.

Once I figured out what was happening, the solution to the problem was simple. The first step is to disable the class's automatic response to redirect request. When a response is returned from the class, it's necessary to check the response to see if it includes a redirect and if so create a new request. Since a redirect could occur more than once, it is necessary to do this in a loop. With each new WebRequest that is created, it is necessary to set the CookiesContainer member.

A simplified version of my code looks like the following:

HttpWebRequest GetNewRequest(string targetUrl)
{
     HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(targetUrl);
     request.CookieContainer = SessionCookieContainer;
     request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
     return request;
}

HttpWebRequest request = GetNewRequest(targetUrl);
HttpWebResponse response= (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

while (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.Found)
{
     response.Close();
     request = GetNewRequest(response.Headers["Location"]);
     response= (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
}

//--At this point the redirected response is ready to be used

CodeProject

Trying to perform this same thing on the .NET Compact Framework is a little more challenging since it doesn't support cookies at all. I'll discuss the solution I used in another post within the next few days.