[php] ASP revisited

[Kristian =?iso-8859-1?Q?K=F6hntopp?=]

ASP ohne Cookies ist offenbar gar kein Problem. Kurzes
Suches in der MSDN Online-Doku fördert sofort das
folgende zutage. Ich wünschte, mit PHP könnte man
das auch so einfach machen - die Logik ist bei PHPLIB
und ASP dieselbe, nur daß PHP kein HTML filtern kann.

Kristian


http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/server/toolbox/cookie.asp

Simulating Cookies with the Cookie Munger

Contents 
Introduction 
How Cookie Munger Works 
Things to Think About When Using Cookie Munger 
If You Don't Want to Use Cookie Munger 
A Caveat 
For More Information 


Introduction 
In the fast-paced world of Web development, developers who 
use Active Server Pages (ASP) and session-state methods can 
easily overlook the fact that not every browser supports cookies. 
To work around this problem, Microsoft has released the beta 
version of Cookie Munger. Cookie Munger is an Internet Server 
Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) filter that munges 
both the outgoing HTML and incoming HTTP transactions to simulate 
cookies and maintain session state (or other information stored 
in cookie text files). 

Cookies are a feature of HTML 2.0 and are used by Web developers 
to enable their sites to save variables or named pieces of 
information directly on the user's computer. When the user revisits 
the site, the cookie is sent along, enabling the site to restore 
variables and state information from the previous session. 

Although cookies are an accepted method of tracking of a visitor's 
session state, many older browsers cannot accept cookies because 
they pre-date the HTML 2.0 standard (they also lack the ability 
to parse tables and frames, but that's another story). Web designers 
aiming for the widest audience possible, however, don't want to leave 
those browsers out in the cold. 

Still other users have configured their browsers to warn them of 
incoming cookies, and get very annoyed by the barrage of cookies 
sent by sites that use ASP. For example, a lot of cookies get sent 
to a user if there's no GLOBAL.ASA file associated with an ASP 
application, and a few get sent even when there is. (Nancy Winnick 
Cluts tells you all about GLOBAL.ASA files and other ASP performance 
tips in 15 ASP Tips to Improve Performance and Style.) 

To effectively use ASP, however, some kind of cookie-ish functionality 
is necessary. ASP expects a browser to send the ASPSESSIONID cookie 
with every request it makes. Without it, ASP does not know which 
session the user owns, and cannot keep the Session object up-to-date 
as the user moves from page to page. (For a whole article devoted to 
cookies and session state, check out Michael Levy's ASP and Web 
Session Management article.) The Cookie Munger filter extends the 
power and functionality of ASP to users whose browsers cannot or 
will not accept cookies. 

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-- 
Kristian Köhntopp, NetUSE Kommunikationstechnologie GmbH
Siemenswall, D-24107 Kiel, Germany, +49 431 386 436 00
Using PHP3? See our web development library at
http://phplib.shonline.de/ (GPL)