overwrite/exchange NSHTTPCookieStorage

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Alexander Clauss - 12 Sep 2007 21:53 GMT

Is it possible to overwrite or exchange the global NSHTTPCookieStorage
object that is used by the Cocoa URL loading system. I would prefer to
use my own private Cookie storage object so that the global cookies of
the default global Cookie storage are not deleted when my own
application deletes or modify its cookies.

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Alexander

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David Phillip Oster - 13 Sep 2007 04:06 GMT

> Is it possible to overwrite or exchange the global NSHTTPCookieStorage
> object that is used by the Cocoa URL loading system. I would prefer to
> use my own private Cookie storage object so that the global cookies of
> the default global Cookie storage are not deleted when my own
> application deletes or modify its cookies.

Yes. I believe there is sample code for this in

http://code.google.com/p/gdata-objectivec-client/

In GDataHTTPFetcher.m

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Alexander Clauss - 13 Sep 2007 12:00 GMT

> Yes. I believe there is sample code for this in
>
> http://code.google.com/p/gdata-objectivec-client/
>
> In GDataHTTPFetcher.m

Thanks. They're not overwriting or exchanging the global cookie storage
of the system, they're just telling the URL loading system of Cocoa not
to handle Cookies (using the message setHTTPShouldHandleCookies of
NSURLRequest) and do their own cookie processing.

The only thing that has prevented me to do this so far is, that Apple
itself writes in the NSRequest.h header file that the message
"setHTTPShouldHandleCookies" is currently not implemented.

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Alexander

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David Phillip Oster - 14 Sep 2007 06:24 GMT

> > Yes. I believe there is sample code for this in
> >
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> itself writes in the NSRequest.h header file that the message
> "setHTTPShouldHandleCookies" is currently not implemented.

I've tested that it does work in 10.4. If you can wait until next month,
when Leopard is expected to be released, you can see what the
NSRequest.h header file says then.

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Alexander Clauss - 15 Sep 2007 00:43 GMT

> I've tested that it does work in 10.4. If you can wait until next month,
> when Leopard is expected to be released, you can see what the
> NSRequest.h header file says then.

Yes, it works in 10.4.

But there's still a big problem: All the cookies that are set via
JavaScript in WebView are not covered in this case. I've tried to
hook me into the global Cookie storage by writing a subclass of
NSHTTPCookieStorage and use this class via "poseAsClass" as a substitute
for the global NSHTTPCookieStorage object. But this doesn't really work.
The message "setCookies:forURL:mainDocumentURL:" is the only message
that gets called, but only for a small fraction of the cookies that are
really set and used. So it seems that Apple itself doesn't use the
public API of NSHTTPCookieStorage and instead uses some private API.

So it seems that there's no way to bypass the limitations of the
NSHTTPCookieStorage class of Cocoa by using a subclass or another cookie
storage object.

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Alexander

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Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / September 2007

overwrite/exchange NSHTTPCookieStorage