Problem with querystrings and cookies

Eifion · Nov 12, 2003

I've noticed a strange problem with setting cookies in ASP when the
cookie name you're setting exists in the querystring. The company I
work for has many partner sites who link to our site like this:
www.mycompany.com/partner.asp?PartnerID=??? The partner.asp page then
sets a cookie called PartnerID containing the value from the
querystring.

We have noticed, however, that if the partner calls the partner.asp
page and alters the capitalization of 'PartnerID' then another cookie
gets set which takes the capitalization of 'PartnerID' from the
querystring. All of the other asp pages in the site then seem to read
the first cookie set and thus it appears that the 'wrong' partner
settings are being used.

Has anyone experienced this problem before? Unfortunately altering the
cookie or querystring names would be a non-trivial task so this is not
an option at the moment.

Eifion

Ray at · Nov 12, 2003

How are you setting the cookie? Unless you're grabbing the name part from
the name/value pair in the querystring and using that as a cookie, the
cookie name will be whatever you set it as. Are you sure that you aren't
doing something like Request("partnerid") as opposed to
Request.QUERYSTRING("partnerid") or Request.COOKIES("partnerid")?

Ray at work

Eifion · Nov 12, 2003

Ray at said:
How are you setting the cookie? Unless you're grabbing the name part from
the name/value pair in the querystring and using that as a cookie, the
cookie name will be whatever you set it as. Are you sure that you aren't
doing something like Request("partnerid") as opposed to
Request.QUERYSTRING("partnerid") or Request.COOKIES("partnerid")?

The code below reproduces the problem. If I go to
http://localhost/cookies.asp?Partner=ABC
I see 'Partner=ABC;' in the JavaScript cookie string. If I then go to
http://localhost/cookies.asp?Partner=DEF
then the cookie gets changed as expected. If I then try
http://localhost/cookies.asp?PArtner=GHI
then another Partner cookie gets appended to the querystring like this
Partner=DEF; ASPSESSIONIDSSAATSAT=LFFBLJKABHFOLLGDOCGOCKOI; PArtner=GHI

which gives two cookies with the same name (except for capitalisation).

Eifion

<%
strSource = Request.QueryString("Partner")
Response.Cookies("Partner") = strSource
%>
<Html>
<Head>
<Title></Title>
</Head>
<Body>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write(document.cookie);
</script>
</Body>
</Html>

Ray at · Nov 12, 2003

Although I never thought about if this would carry through to such code,
javascript is a case sensitive language. What are you doing with that
client side cookie code anyway?

Ray at work

Eifion · Nov 12, 2003

Nothing. The problem is that VBScript seems to get confused when reading
the cookies back on the server and sometimes gets the 'wrong' one when I
do a Request.Cookies("PartnerID"), ignoring the most recently set
partner cookie and choosing an earlier one.

Eifion

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Problem with querystrings and cookies

Eifion

Ray at

Eifion

Ray at

Eifion

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