JBoss 5.1.0 (JSF/Seam) cookies blowing up with accented characters

Question

I cannot see this behavior in JBoss 4.2.3. If I try to call addCookie() on HttpServletResponse and my cookie value has accented characters in it (ex. ç) I get this exception: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Control character in cookie value, consider BASE64 encoding your value

Does anyone know what change in JBoss 5.1.0 could be causing these problems?

Answer 1

Apparently they fixed a bug so that the cookie name now finally conforms the RFC2109.

Also see the javax.servlet.http.Cookie API specification:

The name must conform to RFC 2109. That means it can contain only ASCII alphanumeric characters and cannot contain commas, semicolons, or white space or begin with a $ character. The cookie's name cannot be changed after creation.

The c with cedille ç is not an ASCII character.

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Update: sorry, the problem concerns the cookie value. This is then related to this Tomcat bugfix (JBoss uses Tomcat under the hoods). This should be workaroundable by setting the cookie version as follows:

cookie.setVersion(1);

The ç is not a valid character for the cookie value according the old Netscape specification, but it is according the newer RFC2109 specification. With the Cookie#setVersion() you can toggle between them.