reading a cookie from C# windows application

Question

Hi I have two questions: 1) My C# windows application needs to read a cookie produced by a web page. is it possible to do so? if yes then how? any suggestions/ideas/links etc welcome! 2) My C# windows application needs to check whether user has got a url open in the browser or not. (for example it needs to check whether www.google.com is open in browser on his/her PC and if it is active or inactive!). How can I do that? Any ideas/suggestions/links etc welcome! Sajid Developer UK

dotnet · Answer

hi this may help check static methods on the implicit Environment.UserName and MachineName for dynamism but... // assuming asp.net wrote the cookie thus:- if (Request.Cookies[Xtracker] == null) { HttpCookie oHttpCookie = new HttpCookie(Xtracker); oHttpCookie.Expires = DateTime.MaxValue; // Never Expires oHttpCookie.Values.Add(THEIR-IP Request.UserHostAddress.ToString()); Response.Cookies.Add(oHttpCookie); } //get cookie (its text) string sCookieContents = Generic.StringUtilities.GetAFileNameReturnTheContentsAsText(@C:\Documents and Settings\+Craig+@\Cookies\+craig@localhost[1].txt); //process the cookie string NOTE: each element is broken up by 
 so domain is irrelevent string sIP=sCookieContents.Substring(Xtracker
THEIR-IP=.Length);//cut off the front sIP=sIP.Substring(0 sIP.IndexOf(
)); MessageBox.Show(sIP); the above code gives the IP address of the customer we use this for tracking product use ie. they download the product via .aspx page we log their IP in cookie they install we grab IP from cookie on first winform .exe run each time they boot .exe product we then send IP in a webservice request. usage tracking for licensing... questions welcome here dotnet at@sign orange.net craig soens-hughes www.alphatask.net AlphaTask e-salon solutions

mibuyt · Answer

Hi For your question1 you can look at windows resources kit. It comes with tools to check who's logon. But i do not know how to call it in C#. Probably it is some win32 APIs which you can look at. Maybe you can check at pinvoke.net. For your question2 since you have the name of the cookie: @ .txt Why can't you slice it so you can get the websitename? You can use regular expressions to do it. Won't be that hard. I also believe that each cookies has its time and date creation plus the lifetime of it. Hmm.. maybe you can perform some time checking. That is all i can help. Since i never do too much on cookies :) Cheers.

sajid307 · Answer

yes it will be on local machine and the previliges can be sorted out!

sajid307 · Answer

thx for reply yes reading a text file is not difficult but in reading a cookie there r lot of problems for example: 1) cookies r stored in a folder (and also this folder keeps changing as ur browser and OS changes but thats a small problem) under the username that logs into the PC ... (problem --> how do i get the user logged into PC) 2.) each cookie's name is like this: @ .txt (the problem in this is --> how do i get the website name? so that i m able to open this file to create a stream reader!) Any more ideaswelcome? anyone!?! Sajid

mibuyt · Answer

Add on: Furthermore if it is on your local machine which you have admin privelege... so you can access the cookies without any issues...

mibuyt · Answer

Hi Regarding your 1st question why not? Most cookies if not mistaken (correct me if i am wrong) are stored under the Temporary Internet Files folder. Cookies are just text file. You can use create a streamreader and read it. Cheers.