ASP MVC Cookies not persisting

Question

I have a ASP MVC App with some seemingly simple code to save and retrieve cookies but for some reason they won't persist. The code in the controller is :

if (System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies["CountryPreference"] == null)
{
    HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("CountryPreference");
    cookie.Value = country;
    cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(1);
    System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
}

And to load it again :

if (System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["CountryPreference"] != null)
{
    System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["CountryPreference"].Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(1);
    data.Country = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["CountryPreference"].Value;
}

For some reason the cookie is always null?

Is the cookie there when you inspect the request & response with FireBug or something like that? — ten5peed
– ten5peed, Commented Jan 20, 2009 at 9:46

John K · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-11 03:34:01Z

98

The problem lies in following code:

if (System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies["CountryPreference"] == null)

When you try to check existence of a cookie using Response object rather than Request, ASP.net automatically creates a cookie.

Check this detailed post here: http://chwe.at/blog/post/2009/01/26/Done28099t-use-ResponseCookiesstring-to-check-if-a-cookie-exists!.aspx

Quote from the article in case the link goes down again ....

The short explanation, if you don’t like to read the entire story

If you use code like “if (Response.Cookies[“mycookie”] != null) { … }”, ASP.Net automatically generates a new cookie with the name “mycookie” in the background and overwrites your old cookie! Always use the Request.Cookies-Collection to read cookies!

[ More detail in the article ]

edited May 11, 2011 at 3:34

John K

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answered Feb 26, 2009 at 12:03

Nilesh Deshpande

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4 Comments

Chris Marisic Over a year ago

I +1'd this a long time ago but I have to say this was one of the most asinine API decisions ever done by Microsoft in .NET.

eran otzap Over a year ago

iv'e got the same problem and i only use request to read cookies stackoverflow.com/questions/7510327/…

Losbear Over a year ago

I know better than to use request instead of response when CREATING a cookie, but for some reason when GETTING it I must of copied and pasted and left it as response - so my cookies weren't persisting past the first page load. Thanks for this!

AbeyMarquez Over a year ago

Hmm... could this behavior be used to intentionally delete an existing cookie?

Fernando JS · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-13 14:35:37Z

2

In resume, don't use "Response" to read cookies, use "Request".

answered May 13, 2013 at 14:35

Fernando JS

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