How do I check if session cookies are enabled in Classic ASP?

Question

What's an elegant way in Classic ASP to check if session cookies are enabled in a user's browser using server side code (because javascript might be disabled as well).

I have a solution of my own but it looks ugly as hell.

@James - that doesn't differentiate between setting a session cookie and a general purpose cookie though (IE lets you differentiate between First Party, Session Cookies and Third Party, but I see with Firefox they only differentiate between First Party and Third Party)? I'm setting a session value in a login page then doing a Response.Redirect kinda thing and checking to see if the session value is still valid.

Cheers
Kev

Answer 1

Well, the "ugly as hell" method we used, was to set a cookie and redirect to a new page. In the code for the new page, see if the cookie was set. Since the only way to get to the second page is to be redirected there when the cookie is set, it's presence or absence should tell the state of the browser.

Answer 2

Unless you specify an expiry on the cookie it will be a session cookie. The term session is a bit overloaded in HTTP. When the IE dialog refers to a session cookie it means any cookie that is only stored in process memory and not persisted to disk, therefore only lives for the duration of the process (the session). Start another IExplore.exe process and you have another session which will not have the values of any previous or extant session cookies.

You are correct though that you can test whether even session level cookies are being blocked by just storing a value in the session object and testing for its presence on a redirect.