Managing HTTP Cookies on iPhone

Question

I want to port a python app that uses mechanize for the iPhone. This app needs to login to a webpage and using the site cookie to go to other pages on that site to get some data.

With my python app I was using mechanize for automatic cookie management. Is there something similar for Objective C that is portable to the iPhone?

Thanks for any help.

Treasatreason

A Python app? WWW::Mechanize is a Perl library. – Budgie

There is also an python port. wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize – Treasatreason

Answer 1

NSURLConnection gives you cookie management for free. From the URL Loading System Programming Guide:

The URL loading system automatically sends any stored cookies appropriate for an NSURLRequest. unless the request specifies not to send cookies. Likewise, cookies returned in an NSURLResponse are accepted in accordance with the current cookie acceptance policy.

Infusorian

How do i check if a NSURLRequest does send with cookies though? how to log it to console? – Marmawke

See -[NSHTTPCookieStorage cookiesForURL:]. – Infusorian

Answer 2

You can use the NSURLConnection class to perform a HTTP request to login the website, and retrieve the cookie. To perform a request, just create an instance of NSURLConnection and assign a delegate object to it.

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com/"]];
NSURLConnection *connection = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:request delegate:self];

Then, implement a delegate method.

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response
{
    NSHTTPURLResponse *httpResponse = (NSHTTPURLResponse *)response;
    NSDictionary *fields = [httpResponse allHeaderFields];
    NSString *cookie = [fields valueForKey:@"Set-Cookie"]; // It is your cookie
}

Retain or copy the cookie string. When you want to perform another request, add it to your HTTP header of your NSURLRequest instance.

NSMutableURLRequest *request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com/"]];
[request addValue:cookie forHTTPHeaderField:@"Cookie"];

Necrosis

You don't need to do this, NSURLConnection automatically stores and sends cookies unless you explicitly tell it not to. – Coventry

Even though this shouldn't be necessary fixed a suspected bug in iOS 4.2GM – Transmontane

How would one detect that a Session has expired client-side? What callback should we expect? Or is it just a matter of checking to see if the request (with that session id) succeeded or not? – Jesusitajet

Answer 3

@zonble's answer only works in my localhost; If the server is not running locally, the "Set-Cookie" header is missing from the NSDictionary *fields = [HTTPResponse allHeaderFields];

Finally I found @benzado's solution works fine. Also see: iphone nsurlconnection read cookies @Tal Bereznitskey's answer.

Anacoluthia