iPhone: HTTP Authentication - Basic Auth vs HTTP Sessions

logix812 wrote:
Ok.. I got it... Here is the round trip on using NSHTTPCookie

The following makes a request to the server, the server sets some cookies and the response is returned, the cookies are stored in NSHTTPCookieStorage and retrieved, and sent back to the server. The server then acknowledges it received the cookies. On the server side I am using Python/mod_python, but it could just as easily be done with a server side language of your choosing, just need to know how to set cookies with it.

OBJECTIVE-C

NSHTTPURLResponse * response;
 NSError * error;
 NSMutableURLRequest * request;
 request = [[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://temp/gomh/authenticate.py?setCookie=1"]
 cachePolicy:NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringCacheData
 timeoutInterval:60] autorelease];
 [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];
 NSLog(@"RESPONSE HEADERS: %@", [response allHeaderFields]);
 // If you want to get all of the cookies:
 NSArray * all = [NSHTTPCookie cookiesWithResponseHeaderFields:[response allHeaderFields] forURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://temp"]];
 NSLog(@"How many Cookies: %d", all.count);
 // Store the cookies:
 // NSHTTPCookieStorage is a Singleton.
 [[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] setCookies:all forURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://temp"] mainDocumentURL:nil];
 // Now we can print all of the cookies we have:
 for (NSHTTPCookie *cookie in all)
 NSLog(@"Name: %@ : Value: %@, Expires: %@", cookie.name, cookie.value, cookie.expiresDate);
 // Now lets go back the other way. We want the server to know we have some cookies available:
 // this availableCookies array is going to be the same as the 'all' array above. We could
 // have just used the 'all' array, but this shows you how to get the cookies back from the singleton.
 NSArray * availableCookies = [[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] cookiesForURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://temp"]];
 NSDictionary * headers = [NSHTTPCookie requestHeaderFieldsWithCookies:availableCookies];
 // we are just recycling the original request
 [request setAllHTTPHeaderFields:headers];
 request.URL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://temp/gomh/authenticate.py"];
 error = nil;
 response = nil;
 NSData * data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];
 NSLog(@"The server saw: %@", [[[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding] autorelease]);

*PYTHON (mod_python)*

import time
from mod_python import apache
from mod_python.util import FieldStorage
from mod_python import Cookie
def handler(req):
 data = FieldStorage(req)
 if data.has_key('setCookie'):
 c = Cookie.Cookie("userid", 1)
 c2 = Cookie.Cookie("foo", "bar")
 c.expires = time.time() + 86400
 c2.expires = time.time() + 86400
 Cookie.add_cookie(req, c)
 Cookie.add_cookie(req, c2)
 else:
 cookies = Cookie.get_cookies(req, Cookie.Cookie);
 req.write("Available Cookies: %s" % str(cookies))
 return apache.OK