[Zope-dev] Zope Cookie Handling

[Pearson, Brian Edward (GEA, 056278)]

> All,
> 
> Here is another interesting issue that I have encountered while trying to
> process cookies in Zope.
> 
> On a different app. server I have a Java class which generates an
> encrypted cookie when a user logs into the site.  When the user navigates
> over to my Zope site, I wish to check the value of the UID.  I do this by
> retrieving the cookie within the following snippet of DTML:
> 
> <dtml-if "REQUEST.cookies.has_key('UID')">
> 		<dtml-call "REQUEST.set('cookie',
> REQUEST.cookies.values())">
> 		<dtml-var "validateCookie(REQUEST, REQUEST['REMOTE_ADDR'])">
> </dtml-if>	
> 
> This DTML calls a DTML method (validateCookie) which in turn is calling
> the following External Python Method:
> 
> import xmlrpclib, base64
> 
> def validateUID(self, REQUEST, ipaddr):
>         cookie = REQUEST.get('cookie')
>         servlet =
> xmlrpclib.Server("http://salesnet-dev.appl.ge.com/geaservlet/X
> mlRpcTest")
>         cookie = repr(cookie)
>         cookie = cookie[2:]
>         cookie = cookie[:-2]
>         return servlet.validateCookie.check(cookie, ipaddr) 
> 
> This XML-RPC call attempts to invoke the Java decrypt method.  Herein lies
> the problem:
> 
> Upon investigation of the value contained in the UID cookie, Zope returned
> the following:
> \316\313\321\310\316\315\314\311\321\312\316\317\317\223\310\321\315\317\3
> 13\316\317'
> 
> If I print out each character created during the Java encrypt method, the
> following values are returned:
> 
> \206\203\209\200\etc.etc.
> 
> A colleague of mine pointed out that Zope was returning the values in
> Octal rather than decimal.
> 
> Is this behavior by design?  Is there another mechanism I can use to
> retrieve the raw cookie value before Zope places it in a dictionary?
> Rather than code a string parsing routine in Java, are there any
> suggestions as to how to convert each character back to decimal, or obtain
> the string prior to being converted into octal?
> 
> Once again, I appreciate the assistance/responses.  Everyone on this group
> has been wonderful to interact with.
> 
> -Brian