Using CookieContainer with WebClient class

Maxim Zaslavsky picture Maxim Zaslavsky · Nov 22, 2009 · Viewed 143.5k times · Source

I've previously used a CookieContainer with HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse sessions, but now, I want to use it with a WebClient. As far as I understand, there is no built-in method like there is for HttpWebRequests (request.CookieContainer). How can I collect cookies from a WebClient in a CookieContainer?

I googled for this and found the following sample:

public class CookieAwareWebClient : WebClient
{
    private readonly CookieContainer m_container = new CookieContainer();

    protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
    {
        WebRequest request = base.GetWebRequest(address);
        HttpWebRequest webRequest = request as HttpWebRequest;
        if (webRequest != null)
        {
            webRequest.CookieContainer = m_container;
        }
        return request;
    }
}

Is this the best way to do it?

Answer

Rajeesh picture Rajeesh · Oct 22, 2011
 WebClient wb = new WebClient();
 wb.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Cookie, "somecookie");

From Comments

How do you format the name and value of the cookie in place of "somecookie" ?

wb.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Cookie, "cookiename=cookievalue"); 

For multiple cookies:

wb.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Cookie, 
              "cookiename1=cookievalue1;" +
              "cookiename2=cookievalue2");