ASP.NET Interview Questions on Cookies

What are Cookies in ASP.NET?
Cookies are small pieces of information stored on the client computer.Use cookies to store small amounts of information on the client’s machine. Web sites often use cookies to store user preferences or other information that is client-specific. Because cookies can be refused, it is important to check whether the browser allows them before you try to create them.They are limited to storing only character data and they are limited to 4K in size.

What are different types of Cookies?
Session Cookies
Persistent Cookies

What are Session Cookies?
Session cookies are stored in-memory during the client browser session. When the browser is closed the session cookies are lost.

How can you create Session Cookies?
You can create session cookies by calling the Add method of the Cookies collection on the Response object. The Cookies collection contains individual cookie objects of type HttpCookie.

//Code to create a UserName cookie containing the name David.
HttpCookie CookieObject = new HttpCookie("UserName", "David");
Response.Cookies.Add(CookieObject);

//Code to read the Cookie created above
Request.Cookies["UserName"].Value;

What is the difference between Session Cookies and Persistent Cookies?
Persistent Cookies are same as Session Cookies except that, persistent cookies have an expiration date. The expiration date indicates to the browser that it should write the cookie to the client's hard drive. Keep in mind that because a user can delete cookies from their machine that there is no guarantee that a cookie you "drop" on a user machine will be there the next time they visit your site.

What are Persistent Cookies used for?
Persistent cookies are generally used to store information that identifies a returning user to a Web site. Typical information found in Persistent Cookies includes user names or user IDs.

How do you create a Persistent Cookie?
You create a persistent cookie the same way as session cookies except that you set the Expires property to a Date in the future which will store the Cookie to the client computer harddrive.

//Code to create a UserName Persistent Cookie that lives for 10 days
HttpCookie CookieObject = new HttpCookie("UserName", "David");
CookieObject.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(10);
Response.Cookies.Add(CookieObject);

//Code to read the Cookie created above
Request.Cookies["UserName"].Value;

What is Cookie Dictionary?
A cookie dictionary is a single cookie object that stores multiple pieces of information. You use the Values property to access and assign new values to the cookie dictionary.

Give an example using Cookie Dictionary?
//Code to create a Cookie Dictionary
HttpCookie CookieObject = new HttpCookie("UserPreference");

//Use the Values property to assign new values to the cookie dictionary
CookieObject.Values.Add("UserName", "David");
CookieObject.Values.Add("Country", "USA");
CookieObject.Values.Add("PreviousVisit", DateTime.Now.ToString());
CookieObject.Expires = DateTime.MaxValue;

//Add the Cookie to the client machine using the Response object
Response.Cookies.Add(CookieObject);

//Code to read the Cookie created above
HttpCookie ObjectCookie = Request.Cookies["UserPreference"];
string UserName = ObjectCookie.Values["UserName"];
string Country = ObjectCookie.Values["Country"];
string PreviousVisit = ObjectCookie.Values["PreviousVisit"];

What are the advantages of Using Cookies?
1. Cookies do not require any server resources since they are stored on the client.
2. Cookies are easy to implement.
3. You can configure cookies to expire when the browser session ends (session cookies) or they can exist for a specified length of time on the client computer (persistent cookies).

What are the disadvantages of Using Cookies?
1. Users can delete a cookies.
2. Users browser can refuse cookies,so your code has to anticipate that possibility.
3. Cookies exist as plain text on the client machine and they may pose a possible security risk as anyone can open and tamper with cookies.

How do you create a Cookie that never expires?
To create a Cookie that never expires set the Expires property of the Cookie object to DateTime.MaxValue.

Are Cookies secure?
No, Cookies are not secure. You must pay attention to the type of data you store in cookies.
1. Cookies are not designed to store critical information so storing passwords in a cookie is a bad idea.
2. Keep the lifetime of a cookie as short as practically possible.
3. Encrypt cookie data to help protect the values stored in the cookie.