WebView and Cookies on Android

I have an application on appspot that works fine through regular browser, however when used through Android WebView, it cannot set and read cookies. I am not trying to get cookies "outside" this web application BTW, once the URL is visited by WebView, all processing, ids, etc. can stay there, all I need is session management inside that application. First screen also loads fine, so I know WebView + server interactivity is not broken.

I looked at WebSettings class, there was no call like setEnableCookies.

I load url like this:

public class MyActivity extends Activity {
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);       
    WebView webview = new WebView(this);
    setContentView(webview);      
    webview.loadUrl([MY URL]);
  }
  .. 
}

Any ideas?

If you are using Android Lollipop i.e. SDK 21, then:

CookieManager.getInstance().setAcceptCookie(true);

won't work. You need to use:

CookieManager.getInstance().setAcceptThirdPartyCookies(webView, true);

I ran into same issue and the above line worked as a charm.

From the Android documentation:

> The CookieSyncManager is used to synchronize the browser cookie > store between RAM and permanent storage. To get the best performance, > browser cookies are saved in RAM. A separate thread saves the cookies > between, driven by a timer.
> > To use the CookieSyncManager, the host application has to call the > following when the application starts: > > CookieSyncManager.createInstance(context) > > To set up for sync, the host application has to call > > CookieSyncManager.getInstance().startSync() > > in Activity.onResume(), and call > > CookieSyncManager.getInstance().stopSync() > > in Activity.onPause(). > > To get instant sync instead of waiting for the timer to trigger, the > host can call > > CookieSyncManager.getInstance().sync() > > The sync interval is 5 minutes, so you will want to force syncs > manually anyway, for instance in onPageFinished(WebView, String). Note > that even sync() happens asynchronously, so don't do it just as your > activity is shutting down.

Finally something like this should work:

// use cookies to remember a logged in status   
CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this);
CookieSyncManager.getInstance().startSync();
WebView webview = new WebView(this);
webview.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
setContentView(webview);      
webview.loadUrl([MY URL]);

I figured out what's going on.

When I load a page through a server side action (a url visit), and view the html returned from that action inside a Webview, that first action/page runs inside that Webview. However, when you click on any link that are action commands in your web app, these actions start a new browser. That is why cookie info gets lost because the first cookie information you set for Webview is gone, we have a seperate program here.

You have to intercept clicks on Webview so that browsing never leaves the app, everything stays inside the same Webview.

  WebView webview = new WebView(this);      
  webview.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {  
      @Override  
      public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url)  
      {  
        view.loadUrl(url); //this is controversial - see comments and other answers
        return true;  
      }  
    });                 
  setContentView(webview);      
  webview.loadUrl([MY URL]);

This fixes the problem.

> My problem is cookies are not working "within" the same session. –

Burak: I had the same problem. Enabling cookies fixed the issue.

CookieManager.getInstance().setAcceptCookie(true);

CookieManager.getInstance().setAcceptCookie(true); Normally it should work if your webview is already initialized

or try this:

CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this);
CookieManager cookieManager = CookieManager.getInstance();
cookieManager.removeAllCookie();
cookieManager.setAcceptCookie(true);