asiufy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm using HTTP::Cookies to capture the cookies sent back from an HTTP Post. I used the following LWP::UserAgent method call: 
$ua->cookie_jar(HTTP::Cookies->new(file => "cookies.txt", autosave => 
+1));

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And then, when the request method is called, the file is generated, but it is empty, with only the #LWP-Cookies-1.0 comment line... I have found a node here that says that HTTP::Cookies can't handle SetCookies3 header fields, so I checked the contents of the HTTP::Response object, and here's what I got: 
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=6kt778cd11;Path=/smp
Set-Cookie2: JSESSIONID=6kt778cd11;Version=1;Discard;Path="/smp"

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So, it seems normal, no SetCookie3... Yet, I can't get the cookie contents ... What could be the problem? Thanks!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: HTTP::Cookies is saving an empty file
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jan 23, 2002 at 02:17 UTC
    Does passing ignore_discard => 1 in the constructor help anything? How about calling $cookie_jar->save() explicitly?
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[d/l]
      Congrats chromatic, you get a cookie :)
      It was the ignore_discard => 1...
      Still it seems funky that the cookie data is saved as a Set-Cookie3 field...
      Thanks, folks!
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RTFM: HTTP::Cookies is saving an empty file
by larryk (Friar) on Jan 23, 2002 at 14:47 UTC
    You have to make the request and then call extract_cookies, hold on...

    From the HTTP::Cookies docs 

    $cookie_jar->extract_cookies($response);
    The extract_cookies() method will look for Set-Cookie: and
    Set-Cookie2: headers in the *HTTP::Response* object passed as
    argument. Any of these headers that are found are used to update t
+he
    state of the $cookie_jar.

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    Hope this helps, 
       larryk                                          
perl -le "s,,reverse killer,e,y,rifle,lycra,,print"
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Re: HTTP::Cookies is saving an empty file
by ropey (Hermit) on Jan 23, 2002 at 21:48 UTC
    I assume what your trying to achieve is just retrieve the cookies from whatever url you are visiting (because it needs cookies for user sessions ???) I did a similar thing a while back, which may/may not help 
        my $url = shift;
    my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
    $ua->timeout(20);
    $ua->agent('Automated agent');
    # with cookie support...
    my $cookies = HTTP::Cookies->new();
    $ua->cookie_jar($cookies);    
    my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $url);
    print STDERR "doing GET request to $url...\n";
    my $res = $ua->request($req);
    my $content = $res->content;        
    my $status = $res->status_line();    
    $ua->cookie_jar->extract_cookies($res);

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[d/l]
      Before you lose all hope be sure that the page you are 
requesting actually sends a cookie. I was sure that mine did
 but IT DIDN'T it was actually an image that was on
 the page that was giving my (netscape) browser a cookie. So
 if you are having a hard time goto the command line and:

GET -ed http://www.google.com

to get the headers and if you dont see something like:

Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=44fae06727e94467:TM=1056331233:LM=1056331233:
S=bt-ZmWiBhxbwpt78; expires=Sun, 17-Jan-2038 19:14:07 GMT;
 path=/; domain=.google.com

then keep trying pages until you do.
douglasmj1 %%AT%% comcast %%DOT%% net
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