ASP.net: Getting HTTPS data server-side? - asp.net

Question

I previously asked on StackOverflow how to parse XML downloaded programmatically by my ASP.net application. By this, I mean that the user visits https://www.example.com/page1.aspx. The code-behind for page1.aspx is supposed to somehow download and parse an xml file located at https://www.example.com/foo.xml.
I received good answers about how to parse the XML. However, I've been out of luck with being able to retrieve XML from my secure HTTPS server.
I am looking at a situation where https://www.example.com/foo.xml authenticates requests with a cookie. (third party system, not Forms Authentication). The answer I received to my question about how to download and parse XML suggested that I use the System.Net.WebClient class. I read that the WebClient class must be customized to work with cookies. Therefore, I wrote the following code:
public class WebClientWithCookies : WebClient
{
private CookieContainer m_container = new CookieContainer();
public CookieContainer CookieContainer
{
get { return m_container; }
set { m_container = value; }
}
public void addCookie(Cookie cookie)
{
m_container.Add(cookie);
}
protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
{
WebRequest request = base.GetWebRequest(address);
if ( request is HttpWebRequest)
{
(request as HttpWebRequest).CookieContainer = m_container;
}
return request;
}
} // end class
However, when the request is received at https://www.example.com/foo.xml, there are no cookies in the request, and so it doesn't work.
How can I work around this problem?

Answer 1

Where are you creating the cookie? That seems to be a missing part from the code you are displaying. There is an "HttpCookie" class as part of the System.Web name space that may be useful.

Answer 2

Here's the code that I eventually wrote that solved the problem:
private XmlDocument getXmlData(string url)
{
System.Net.HttpWebRequest rq = (System.Net.HttpWebRequest)System.Net.WebRequest.Create(url);
System.Net.CookieContainer container = new System.Net.CookieContainer();
for (int i = 0; i < System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies.Count; i++)
{
System.Web.HttpCookie httpcookie = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[i];
string name = httpcookie.Name;
string value = httpcookie.Value;
string path = httpcookie.Path;
string domain = "my.domain";
System.Net.Cookie cookie = new System.Net.Cookie(name, value, path, domain);
container.Add(cookie);
}
rq.CookieContainer = container;
rq.Timeout = 10000;
rq.UserAgent = "Asset Tracker Server Side Code";
System.Net.HttpWebResponse rs = (System.Net.HttpWebResponse)rq.GetResponse();
System.Text.Encoding enc = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(1252);
System.IO.StreamReader reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(rs.GetResponseStream());
System.Xml.XmlDocument xml = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
xml.Load(rs.GetResponseStream());
return xml;
}