[Catalina] unable to retrieve existing session

[Serle Shuman <se...@creator.co.za>]

I am using catalina on my local machine for development i.e. no domain available. I have installed my session creation/retrieval servlet in a particular context on this machine. I hit the servlet from a local browser IE4 using 127.0.0.1 IP etc. My servlet never retrieves a previously created session. I have debugged the catalina code and found that:
1) the session cookie is created correctly and send out in the response
2) the browser definitely accepts the cookie (set it to prompt on cookies)
3) the subsequent request does not contain the cookie, thus a new cookie is created by my servlet.

What's wrong?

Thanks,
Serle

Re: [Catalina] unable to retrieve existing session (resolution)

[Serle Shuman <se...@creator.co.za>]

Thought this post may be useful to others:

I've checked RFC2109 and Cookies should work on IP address. I also tried to do the mapping in my hosts file i.e. map http://www.localhost.com  to 127.0.0.1. I finally resolved the problem by creating a virtual host for my application. From these experiments it would seem that contexts and thier path info is confusing the browser's cookie management. 

Once again thanks for the help Craig :)
Serle



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Craig R. McClanahan 
  To: tomcat-dev@jakarta.apache.org 
  Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 8:26 PM
  Subject: Re: [Catalina] unable to retrieve existing session


  Serle Shuman wrote: 
    I am using catalina on my local machine for development i.e. no domain available. I have installed my session creation/retrieval servlet in a particular context on this machine. I hit the servlet from a local browser IE4 using 127.0.0.1 IP etc. My servlet never retrieves a previously created session. I have debugged the catalina code and found that:1) the session cookie is created correctly and send out in the response2) the browser definitely accepts the cookie (set it to prompt on cookies)3) the subsequent request does not contain the cookie, thus a new cookie is created by my servlet. What's wrong? Thanks,Serle

  What's wrong is identified in the third step -- the browser didn't return the cookie.  My understanding is that cookies don't work when you use IP addresses instead of host names. 

  Two options come to mind: 

  * Define the "localhost" name in "c:\windows\hosts" so that 
    it can get resolved even without a network connection, by 
    adding a line like this: 

      127.0.0.1  localhost 

  * Use URL rewriting to maintain your sessions even in the 
    absence of cookies (Catalina does support this). 

  Craig 
    

Re: [Catalina] unable to retrieve existing session

["Craig R. McClanahan" <Cr...@eng.sun.com>]

Serle Shuman wrote:

> I am using catalina on my local machine for development i.e. no domain
> available. I have installed my session creation/retrieval servlet in a
> particular context on this machine. I hit the servlet from a local
> browser IE4 using 127.0.0.1 IP etc. My servlet never retrieves a
> previously created session. I have debugged the catalina code and
> found that:1) the session cookie is created correctly and send out in
> the response2) the browser definitely accepts the cookie (set it to
> prompt on cookies)3) the subsequent request does not contain the
> cookie, thus a new cookie is created by my servlet. What's wrong?
> Thanks,Serle

What's wrong is identified in the third step -- the browser didn't
return the cookie.  My understanding is that cookies don't work when you
use IP addresses instead of host names.

Two options come to mind:

* Define the "localhost" name in "c:\windows\hosts" so that
  it can get resolved even without a network connection, by
  adding a line like this:

    127.0.0.1  localhost

* Use URL rewriting to maintain your sessions even in the
  absence of cookies (Catalina does support this).

Craig