Cookies Do Not Set Quickly

Question

I don't typically play with Cookies, but I wanted to look into this one verses the Session variables I typically use.

If I set a Cookie, then immediately try to read from it, I do not get the value back that I just set it to.

However, if I refresh the page or close the browser and open it back up, the Cookie appears to be set.

I'm debugging this in Chrome. Would that make any difference?

public const string COOKIE = "CompanyCookie1";
private const int TIMEOUT = 10;

private string Cookie1 {
  get {
    HttpCookie cookie = Request.Cookies[COOKIE];
    if (cookie != null) {
      TimeSpan span = (cookie.Expires - DateTime.Now);
      if (span.Minutes < TIMEOUT) {
        string value = cookie.Value;
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) {
          string[] split = value.Split('=');
          return split[split.Length - 1];
        }
        return cookie.Value;
      }
    }
    return null;
  }
  set {
    HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(COOKIE);
    cookie[COOKIE] = value;
    int minutes = String.IsNullOrEmpty(value) ? -1 : TIMEOUT;
    cookie.Expires =  DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(minutes);
    Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
  }
}

Below is how I use it:

public Employee ActiveEmployee {
  get {
    string num = Request.QueryString["num"];
    string empNum = String.IsNullOrEmpty(num) ? Cookie1 : num;
    return GetActiveEmployee(empNum);
  }
  set {
    Cookie1 = (value != null) ? value.Badge : null;
  }
}

This is how I am calling it, where Request.QueryString["num"] returns NULL so that Cookie1 is being read from:

ActiveEmployee = new Employee() { Badge = "000000" };
Console.WriteLine(ActiveEmployee.Badge); // ActiveEmployee is NULL

...but reading from Cookie1 is returning null also.

Is there a command like Commit() that I need to call so that a cookie value is immediately available?

Answer 1

Cookies are not like Session- there are two cookie collections, not one.

Request.Cookies != Response.Cookies. The former is the set of cookies that are sent from the browser when they request the page, the latter is what you send back with the content. This is exposing the nature of the cookies RFC, unlike Session, which is a purely Microsoft construct.