Develop Reference

Suppress cookie(s) in Java HTTPUrlConnection

I have an android app that connects to a server. The app appends a cookie to each request. However, I need to suppress this cookie for a request to a specific URI.
Some more details:
Can't add an empty cookie for this URI - even if only the empty one is sent, the request must be without a cookie.
Use okHTTP3 for this request. It's ugly but it'll work.
Looked at HttpUrlConnection, CookieStore and CookieManager - could not find any API to disable sending of cookie for a connection
I prefer not to disable cookies in general but just suppress this one

disable/ignore cookies with httpclient

How can I disable/ignore default cookie handling of httpclient. I want to do it manually. I want to set a pre-defined cookie header for all http requests.

The latest httpclient (4.5.1) has a method called "disableCookieManagement", and it appears this just disables the internal cookie management, not the ability to send or receive cookies, and is working for me-
http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/httpclient/apidocs/org/apache/http/impl/client/HttpClientBuilder.html#disableCookieManagement()

Set httpclient.setCookieStore(cookieStore); before you execute your HttpClient

Force to setup the HttpContext before executing the request:
private HttpClientContext httpContext = new HttpClientContext();
httpContext.setCookieStore(new BasicCookieStore());
The setCookieStore will create an empty cookie store to replace the default cookie store of http connection.
After that we can execute the http method:
org.apache.http.client.HttpClient.execute(HttpUriRequest, HttpContext)
Also we can reuse the cookie store (hold the BasicCookieStore) to keep the connection alive.

I could not find a way to disable/ignore cookie handling by DefaultHttpClient in Andoroid(I should have explored more into Android source code but have a time limitation). But I resolved it by removing all cookies before doing httpClient.execute() like this -
((AbstractHttpClient) myDefaultHttpClient).getCookieStore().clear();
This removes all the cookies stored by the defaultHttpClient and then you can manually handle(add/delete) cookies using -
myHttpPost.setHeader("Cookie", myCookie);
Hope it helps.

android-spring resttemplate manage cookies

I am using Spring for Android in a project and I need to manage the cookie store/manager. I am able to add cookies to any request by using an implementation of ClientHttpRequestInterceptor, but I would like to remove some of these when sending a request.
To be more specific, the problem I am facing is that, for Froyo, the implementation specific in Spring (with DefaultHttpClient) adds automatically to headers the cookies from CookieStore - that even if I am setting explicitly the headers. But I would like to manage these cookies myself (either remove some of them, or update their values). While for Gingerbread above (Spring implementation is done with HttpURLConnection) the cookies are added only if I am doing it myself - however I am not that sure as I don't see Spring setting any CookieHandler, but the bottom line is that I don't see them when performing a request or I can see them updated. So the issue is more specific to Froyo.
The work-around is to reset the connection factory; something like:
protected void resetCookieStoreForTemplate(RestTemplate template) {
if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT <= Build.VERSION_CODES.FROYO) {
template.setRequestFactory(new HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory());
}
}
Underneath, that seems to recreate the DefaultHttpClient and will use a new CookieStore. But that seems to me a bit ugly.
To wrap up, my question would be: does Spring for Android provide some method to expose some API for Cookie management? Just the way RestTemplate exposes some abstractions for connectivity, connection factory, message converters and so on, I would be very happy to have some abstraction for cookie management.

I've not used Spring myself but from what I've read about it, it follows the official advice and switches HTTP clients based on API version (which is quite clever, if seriously over-engineered for my liking). When using HTTPUrlConnection, as you mentioned, Spring probably doesn't change the CookieHandler. You should be seeing in-memory cookie handling, so everything should work for requests in the same app run but the cookies would be wiped when you close the app. Can you confirm this is what you're seeing?
If so, all you have to do is create a new CookieManager instance, passing it a custom CookieStore and null for the CookiePolicy to use the default.
It's unfortunate that a persistent store isn't built-in but it's not particularly difficult to write one either.
Edit: See here for a CookieStore that uses SharedPreferences (haven't tested it myself).

The ClientHttpRequestInterceptor class is a good approach when you need to pass common headers for all requests such as setting up content type, authorization etc. As far as I understood you want to pass some cookie values for specific request.
You could also achieve this via HttpEntity and HttpHeaders class.
HttpHeaders requestHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
requestHeaders.add("Cookie", "name=" + value);
HttpEntity requestEntity = new HttpEntity(null, requestHeaders);
ResponseEntity response = restTemplate.exchange(
"http://server/service?...",
HttpMethod.GET,
requestEntity,
Response.class);
Spring rest template does not provide any off the self solution for managing cookies. The class CookieHandler is provided by Apache not part of spring. Rest template is just a basic solution for managing request response with compare to spring core.

HTTP GET url with Json parameters in Android

I am having the following API call:
http://rollout.gr/api/?query={%22search%22:%22places%22,%22page%22:1}
This API call is executed correctly in my browser. But when I use a DefaultHttpClient to execute this url in my Android application, I get a null response.
I suppose the problem is the JSON data in the HTTP url. Thus, I would like to ask which is the proper way to handle such url in an Android application?
Thanks a lot in advance!

The accolades aren't valid URL characters. The browser is userfriendly enough to automatically URL-encode them, but DefaultHttpClient isn't. The correct line to use from code is:
http://rollout.gr/api/?query=http://rollout.gr/api/?query=%7b%22search%22:%22places%22,%22page%22:1%7d
Note the encoding for the accolades (%7b, %7d).

Your problem may be the strictmode here.
I recommend to do http request in threads or asynctasks. strictmode doesnt let app do http reauest in uithread. maybe your console shows a warning and you get null from http response because of this.
This project may solve your problem:
http://loopj.com/android-async-http/

Not knowing your particular HTTP initialization code, I'm going to assume you didn't provide an explicit JSON accept header. A lot of REST endpoints require this.
httpget.setHeader("Accept", "application/json");

Correct Redirected HTTP GET retrieval

I'd like to know how to do a HTTP GET request to a server from which I know I will get redirected at least a couple of times...
I'd like to get the response (body) of the "last" webpage. It should come up with a code in my specific example...
Or, as an alternative, I do know you can start the browser from within your Android app, is it possible to actually retrieve the body from that ?
Any help, tips, source whatever would be helpfull, cause till now I have found (and tried) like 4 methods and to me it seems there is a jungle of HttpGet, HttpClient, HttpResponse etc libraries ?

final HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams();
HttpClientParams.setRedirecting(params, false);
You can see more on redirect support with HttpClient in other StackOverflow answers.
is it possible to actually retrieve
the body from that ?
No, that would be a security violation.