Android WebView Cookie Problem

Question

I have a server that sends my android app a session cookie to be used for authenticated communication. I am trying to load a WebView with a URL pointing to that same server and I'm trying to pass in the session cookie for authentication. I am observing that it works intermittently but I have no idea why. I use the same session cookie to make other calls on my server and these never fail authentication. I only observe this problem when trying to load a URL in a WebView, and it does not happen every time. Very frustrating.

Below is the code that I'm using to do this. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

String myUrl = ""http://mydomain.com/"; 
CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this); 
CookieManager cookieManager = CookieManager.getInstance(); 
Cookie sessionCookie =  getCookie(); 
if(sessionCookie != null){ 
    String cookieString = sessionCookie.getName() +"="+sessionCookie.getValue()+"; domain="+sessionCookie.getDomain(); 
    cookieManager.setCookie(myUrl, cookieString); 
    CookieSyncManager.getInstance().sync(); 
} 

WebView webView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview); 
webView.getSettings().setBuiltInZoomControls(true); 
webView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true); 
webView.setWebViewClient(new MyWebViewClient()); 
webView.loadUrl(myUrl);

Answer 1

I would save that session cookie as a preference and forcefully repopulate the cookie manager with it. It sounds that session cookie in not surviving Activity restart

Answer 2

I've spent the greater half of 3 hours working on a very similar issue. In my case I had a number of calls that I made to a web service using a DefaulHttpClient and then I wanted to set the session and all other corresponding cookies in my WebView.

I don't know if this will solve your problem, since I don't know what your getCookie() method does, but in my case I actually had to call.

cookieManager.removeSessionCookie();

first to remove the session cookie and then re-add it. I was finding that when I tried to set the JSESSIONID cookie without first removing it, the value I wanted to set it to wasn't being save. Not sure if this will help you particular issue, but thought I'd share what I had found.

Answer 3

Thanks justingrammens! That worked for me, I managed to share the cookie within my DefaultHttpClient requests and WebView activity:

//------- Native request activity
private DefaultHttpClient httpClient;
public static Cookie cookie = null;

//After Login
List<Cookie> cookies = httpClient.getCookieStore().getCookies();
if (!cookies.isEmpty()) {
    for (int i = 0; i < cookies.size(); i++) {
        cookie = cookies.get(i);
    }
}

//------- Web Browser activity
Cookie sessionCookie = myapp.cookie;
CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this);
CookieManager cookieManager = CookieManager.getInstance();
if (sessionCookie != null) {
    cookieManager.removeSessionCookie();
    String cookieString = sessionCookie.getName() + "=" + sessionCookie.getValue() + "; domain=" + sessionCookie.getDomain();
    cookieManager.setCookie(myapp.domain, cookieString);
    CookieSyncManager.getInstance().sync();
}