Getting a cookie from a web project into a WinForm

Mark

Hi there,

I have an application which i have created. The application is a Windows based application mainly written in C# but has some different projects within it. I have a Form project and a web project

Within the web project i have created an ASP.net page which saves data typed into an input box into a cookie, i can then retrieve this data by loading it back out of the cookie as shown below:

HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("Name");
cookie.Value = TextBox1.Text.ToString();
cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(10);
Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
TextBox1.Text = Request.Cookies["Name"].Value;

So my question is, in a winform created in C# how can i get hold of the cookie information? I have seen some examples of ways to do this but they are messy and are very browser dependent, like the one shown below:

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(args[0]);
request.CookieContainer = new CookieContainer();
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
response.Cookies = request.CookieContainer.GetCookies(request.RequestUri);
foreach (Cookie cook in response.Cookies)
{
Console.WriteLine("Cookie:{0} = {1}", cook.Name, cook.Value);
}

Some have also said:

Properties.Settings.Default.MySettingString = "New Value";
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
...
string myValue = Properties.Settings.Default.MySettingString;

That would be nice as a solution, except i have two different projects and so it won't work as properies.settings are project specific.

I just need a way of passing a variable from a web project into a win forms project (within the same Visual Studio solution) for a person's name in a basic computer game, hence me trying to use a cookie, all ideas are welcomed as i am probably going a bad way of doing it. The only other way i could think of was saving to an SQL database

Many thanks,

Mark

6 Replies

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Dileep Kumar8y ago
Accepted answer
Sorry if that couldn't help you much. Actually, I am not sure I understand the architecture of your application.

Anyway, I will give one more try.

If both the forms, the game and the form with webbrowser in it are part of the same application domain (simply same application), you can use a public static object to hold the value. Instead of setting the cookie, you can set the static object and refresh the same on the game form activate or similar event.

If both are different, you can use MemoryMappedFile for sharing the data. I have attached a sample. May not work as it is in your application, but you can make it work with small tweaks like writing the name into the mmf instead of cookie.

Please check if this is helpful.
Mark8y ago
Hi there,

I have looked at the two projects are in the same solution but i couldn't get public static objects to work since they are two different projects within it.

However, the memory mapped file solution did appear to work, it was complicated than i wanted it to be but at least i have a solution now. Question now marked as solved but if you have any idea how the static could work accross a web and winform projects then just let me know as when i tried it, it just wouldn't read anything outside the project in another namespace.

Many thanks for all your help,

Mark
Mark8y ago
Hi there and really good thanks for the response.

That won't work either as in your example you are starting a new process. The windows form is already loaded as this is the first to run when the game is loaded. Also the web page is inside of a web browser object within a seperate form. I can see how your code works but unfortunetely the process is already ran.

I could change my program to load up the web page in an actual browser first but if any modifications needed to be made to the name later then the process is already ran and so it would mess things up wouldn't it?

Also the current directory for web projects always go to an IIS directory in program files when i do a Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() or other function that display current directory in your example for AppSettings, so it only works really with absolute file paths? Not sure how that would work if putting the program on different machines other than say on the C drive and so different folder paths may be involved. I cannot find any information about your AccessUserProcessService class, was this a custom written one? I think it is on the right kind of lines to what i want, just cannot seem to get this one working the way i'd like it. You have any ideas of how else i could pass a variable in a similar way? That XML option is now not sounding like the worst idea but just don't want to create text files when i just know they'll be a way to just pass the value.

I'll keep trying to see if your example can work more but not had much success so far. Also if you know a way around getting the current directory of the source files for a web project then that would be great.
Dileep Kumar8y ago
Hi Mark,

I have attached a sample project. You need to set the path to the WinForms (in the attached solution) executable in the app setting value and just run.

Please tell me the results.
Mark8y ago
Hi Dileep thanks for the reply. Yeah the details are just stored locally on the same machine. It is purely to keep track of a person's name as you move from a web environment to a winforms environment.

I was thinking about just putting a text file in with the details in but i thought that was very beginnerish and not good practice to tranfser to and from one of them. Any other ideas as to what i can try? There is the SQL idea but i didn't know if there were some other little tricks to save setting a whole database up just to store name values...guess it would allow them to be stored on the net then but i don't need that.

Any other sneaky ideas would be apprechiated.

Many thanks,

Mark
Dileep Kumar8y ago
Hi Marc,

Where is this web application hosted? Locally or on the internet?

If this is on the internet, it won't help even if both the projects are in the same solution as after deployment it is a different story.

If the WinForms application and web application are on the same machine, you can write the details in an XML or as a CSV in the local machine folder and access the same file in both apps.