Why won't asp.net create cookies in localhost?

Question

Okay, this is really kinda starting to bug me. I have a simple Web project setup located at: "C:\Projects\MyTestProject\". In IIS on my machine, I have mapped a virtual directory to this location so I can run my sites locally (I understand I can run it from Visual Studio, I like this method better). I have named this virtual directory "mtp" and I access it via http://localhost/mtp/index.aspx. All this is working fine.

However, whenever I try to create a cookie, it simply never gets written out? I've tried this in FF3 and IE7 and it just plain won't write the cookie out. I don't get it. I do have "127.0.0.1 localhost" in my hosts file, I can't really think of anything else I can do. Thanks for any advice.

James

Answer 1

The cookie specs require two names and a dot between, so your cookiedomain cannot be "localhost". Here's how I solved it:

1. Add this to your %WINDIR%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file: 127.0.0.1 dev.livesite.com

2. When developing you use http://dev.livesite.com instead of http://localhost

3. Use ".livesite.com" as cookiedomain (with a dot in the beginning) when creating the cookie. Modern browsers doesn't require a leading dot anymore, but you may want to use anyway for backwards compability.

4. Now it works on all sites:

   • http://dev.livesite.com
   • http://www.livesite.com
   • http://livesite.com