GenCookieString

Purpose

This function returns a properly formatted cookie string given the parameters supplied to the function.  The cookie string can then be appended to the head section of an HTML page being generated for the browser to take the appropriate cookie action.  The string is created as a META set-cookie tag.

Parameters

Parameter: name
Type: string
Description: This is the name of the cookie.  If commas, whitespace, semi-colons or other non-HTML friendly characters are used, then it should be noted that the name string is URL encoded in the returned string, so the name used to retrieve the cookie may have to be updated to use the URL encoded version.

Parameter: value
Type: string
Description: This is the value of the cookie.  If commas, whitespace, semi-colons or other non-HTML friendly characters are used, then it should be noted that the value string is URL encoded in the returned string, so the value returned when you read the cookie back may have to be URL decoded.
(See System.Web.HTTPServerUtility.URLDecode)

Parameter: expire (optional)
Type: string
Description: This is the expiration date and time for the cookie.  If this parameter is omitted, then no expiration will be provided and the cookie will be erased when the web browser session ends.  The date can be in any string format which can be converted by DateTime.Parse such as "April 1, 2006 11:27 PM".  You may also use your system's local date/time format converted to a string value.  The date provided is converted to GMT for purposes of formatting according to RFCs 822, 850, 1036 and 1123.

Parameter: path (optional)
Type: string
Description: This is the path that the cookie is valid for under the server host.  If a cookie has already passed domain matching, then the pathname component of the URL is compared with the path attribute, and if there is a match, the cookie is considered valid and is sent along with the URL request. The path "/foo" would match "/foobar" and "/foo/bar.html". The path "/" is the most general path and is the default value if this parameter is omitted.

Returns

Return value: cookie contents
Type: string
Description: This is the contents of the requested cookie.

Example

This script:

Sub Main(parm as object)
  Dim sCookie As String = ""
  sCookie = hs.GenCookieString("Test", "MyValue", Now.AddDays(10).ToString, "/")
  hs.WriteLog("Cookie", sCookie)
End Sub

Generates this result:

9/21/2006 7:01:50 PM  - Cookie - <meta http-equiv="Set-Cookie" content="Test=MyValue; expires=Sun, 01-Oct-2006 23:01:50 GMT; path=/;">