Reputation: 28622
I'm stuck in a cookie related question. I want to write a program that can automate download the attachments of this forum. So I should maintain the cookies this site send to me. When I send a GET request in my program to the login page, I got the cookie such as Set-Cookie: sso_sid=0589a967; domain=.it168.com in my program. Now if I use a cookie viewer such as cookie monster and send the same GET request, my program get the same result, but the cookie viewer shows that the site also send me two cookies which are: testcookie http://get2know.it/myimages/2009-12-27_072438.jpg and token http://get2know.it/myimages/2009-12-27_072442.jpg
My question is: Where did the two cookie came from? Why they did not show in my program? Thanks.
Upvotes: 1
Views: 135
Reputation: 46753
Your best bet to figure out screen-scraping problems like this one is to use Fiddler. Using Fiddler, you can compare exactly what is going over the wire in your app vs. when accessing the site from a browser. I suspect you'll see some difference between headers sent by your app vs. headers sent by the browser-- this will likley account for the difference you're seeing.
Next, you can do one of two things:
Personally, I like option #2 since it requires a minimum amount of header-setting code, although it's harder initially to figure out which headers the site requires.
On your actual question of why you're seeing 2 cookies, only the diagnosis above will tell you for sure, but I suspect it may have to do with the mechanism that some sites use to detect clients who don't accept cookies. On the first request in a session, many sites will "probe" a client to see if the client accepts cookies. Typically they'll do this:
Anyway, that's one way you could end up with two cookies. Only diagnosis with Fiddler (or a similar tool) will tell you for sure, though.
Upvotes: 2