Accept Cookies in WebClient?

Question

I just started experimenting with C# WebClient. What I have is the code below which gets html code from a website and writes it in a .txt file. The only problem I have is that some websites require you to accept cookies before you can use the website. What this causes is instead of writing the real website html code to the .txt file, it writes the cookie popup html code.

Code:

string downloadedString;
System.Net.WebClient client;

client = new System.Net.WebClient();
 
//"http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_spelers_van_het_Nederlands_voetbalelftal"
downloadedString = client.DownloadString(textBox1.Text);

using (StreamWriter write = new StreamWriter("Data.txt"))
{
    write.Write(downloadedString);
}

So what is the solution to this? Can somebody direct me to the right path?

Answer 1

Usage :

        CookieContainer cookieJar = new CookieContainer();
        cookieJar.Add(new Cookie("my_cookie", "cookie_value", "/", "mysite"));

        CookieAwareWebClient client = new CookieAwareWebClient(cookieJar);

        string response = client.DownloadString("http://example.com/response_with_cookie_only.php");

---

public class CookieAwareWebClient : WebClient
{
    public CookieContainer CookieContainer { get; set; }
    public Uri Uri { get; set; }

    public CookieAwareWebClient()
        : this(new CookieContainer())
    {
    }

    public CookieAwareWebClient(CookieContainer cookies)
    {
        this.CookieContainer = cookies;
    }

    protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
    {
        WebRequest request = base.GetWebRequest(address);
        if (request is HttpWebRequest)
        {
            (request as HttpWebRequest).CookieContainer = this.CookieContainer;
        }
        HttpWebRequest httpRequest = (HttpWebRequest)request;
        httpRequest.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;
        return httpRequest;
    }

    protected override WebResponse GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
    {
        WebResponse response = base.GetWebResponse(request);
        String setCookieHeader = response.Headers[HttpResponseHeader.SetCookie];

        //do something if needed to parse out the cookie.
        if (setCookieHeader != null)
        {
            Cookie cookie = new Cookie(); //create cookie
            this.CookieContainer.SetCookies(request.RequestUri, setCookieHeader);
        }
        
        return response;
    }
}

You will see two overridden methods for GetWebRequest and GetWebResponse. These methods can be overridden to handle the cookie container.