How to handle cookies in httpUrlConnection using cookieManager

Ok, the right way to do it is just like that:

Get Cookies from response header and load them into cookieManager:

static final String COOKIES_HEADER = "Set-Cookie";HttpURLConnection connection = ... ;static java.net.CookieManager msCookieManager = new java.net.CookieManager();Map<String, List<String>> headerFields = connection.getHeaderFields();List<String> cookiesHeader = headerFields.get(COOKIES_HEADER);if (cookiesHeader != null) {    for (String cookie : cookiesHeader) {        msCookieManager.getCookieStore().add(null,HttpCookie.parse(cookie).get(0));    }               }

Get Cookies from cookieManager and load them into connection:

if (msCookieManager.getCookieStore().getCookies().size() > 0) {    // While joining the Cookies, use ',' or ';' as needed. Most of the servers are using ';'    connection.setRequestProperty("Cookie",    TextUtils.join(";",  msCookieManager.getCookieStore().getCookies()));    }

I've been searching/trying for days to fix my issue:cannot access protected web resources even after logging in successfully

I created the same app on iOS and didn't have the same problem because NSUrlConnection did the cookie maintenance for us behind the scene. On Android, I tried manually adding cookie

connection.setRequestProperty("Cookie", "PHPSESSID=str_from_server")

without any luck.

Finally I read this

and added the following 2 lines somewhere in the beginning of my app:

CookieManager cookieManager = new CookieManager();CookieHandler.setDefault(cookieManager);

and everything works fine now.

@David's answer is the best of the lot. Its easiest to maintain a local CookieManager and manually write into and read from the cookie store associated with this cookie manager.

This code loads the Cookies from a response into the cookie manager :

/** * Gets Cookies from the response header and loads them into cookie manager * * @param conn          instance of {@link HttpURLConnection} object * @param cookieManager the cookie manager({@link CookieManager} instance) in which the cookies are to be loaded<p>In case a null object is passed, the function will not perform any action and return back to the caller. </p> */public static void loadResponseCookies(@Nullable HttpURLConnection conn,@Nullable CookieManager cookieManager) {    //do nothing in case a null cokkie manager object is passed    if (cookieManager == null || conn == null){        return;    }    List<String> cookiesHeader = conn.getHeaderFields().get(COOKIES_HEADER);    if (cookiesHeader != null) {        for (String cookieHeader : cookiesHeader) {            List<HttpCookie> cookies;            try {                cookies = HttpCookie.parse(cookieHeader);            } catch (NullPointerException e) {                log.warn(MessageFormat.format("{0} -- Null header for the cookie : {1}",conn.getURL().toString(), cookieHeader.toString()));                //ignore the Null cookie header and proceed to the next cookie header                continue;            }            if (cookies != null) {                Debug("{0} -- Reading Cookies from the response :", conn.getURL().toString());                for (HttpCookie cookie : cookies) {                    Debug(cookie.toString());                }                if (cookies.size() > 0) {                    cookieManager.getCookieStore().add(null, HttpCookie.parse(cookieHeader).get(0));                }            }        }    }}

This code populates the HttpUrlConnection object with the cookies associated with the cookie manager :

public void populateCookieHeaders(HttpURLConnection conn) {    if (this.cookieManager != null) {        //getting cookies(if any) and manually adding them to the request header        List<HttpCookie> cookies = this.cookieManager.getCookieStore().getCookies();        if (cookies != null) {            if (cookies.size() > 0) {                Debug("{0} -- Adding Cookie Headers : ", url.toString());                for (HttpCookie cookie : cookies) {                    Debug(cookie.toString(), null);                }                //adding the cookie header                conn.setRequestProperty(COOKIE_REQUEST_HEADER, StringUtils.join(cookies, ";"));            }        }    }}

This is the most thread safe way to handle cookies.

I tried using a threadlocal cookiestore and an extension of CookieManager. Neither of these approaches worked in my case.