I'm trying to display a web page which requires one to be logged in first. I'm using HttpWebRequest/Response objects to accomplish the logging in part, by collecting the session and authorization cookies in the background.
After logging in, a HttpWebResponse object returns to me the HTML page that I want to show the user via the WebBrowser control, so I know I have the right set of session/authorization cookies to get to the desired web page.
Having the CookieContainer properly populated with relevant cookies, I set the WebBrowser.DocumentText property to a prepared HTML which contains a GET command to the web address I'm trying to display. The browser pops-up trying to render the prepared HTML and I get a server error relating to missing cookies, I assume.
When I try to set WebBrowser.Document.Cookie prior to calling the DocumentText property, in the debugger I'm seeing, that the Cookie property always remains null after trying to set it to a string of the form "cookName=cookValue; cookName=cookValue;".
Why does the Cookie property reject the cookies string I'm passing it? Does this have something to do with HttpOnly cookies? Is my cookie string incorrectly formatted? Am I trying to set the Cookie property at the wrong time?
I did the WebBrowser.Navigate("about:blank") call, which seems to be required to properly initialize the WebBrowser object.
Here is what worked for me:
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
[DllImport("wininet.dll",CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
public static extern bool InternetSetCookie(string lpszUrlName, string lbszCookieName, string lpszCookieData);
//'CookieCollection' was populated using HttpWebRequest/Response calls
int i=0;
InternetSetCookie("https://www.myurl.com/", null, CookieCollection[i++].ToString() + "; expires = Sun, 01-Jan-2013 00:00:00 GMT");
//repeat for however many cookies you've got
browser.Navigate("https://www.myurl.com/tools/..../Index.aspx?t=someValue", true);
//or
browser.DocumentText = someHtml;
Notes:
1) Without including the "expires" value the InternetSetCookie call did not work despite returning 'true'. The "expires" value turns the cookie into a persistent cookie as opposed to a session only cookie.
2) 'browser.Navigate("about:blank");' does not seem to be required. I was able to get at my page with and without this statement.
3) browser.Document.Cookie never worked for me (always null), no matter what I threw at it. And I've tried a lot of different strings, including the one passed into the third parameter of InternetSetCookie.