InternetSetCookieA function (wininet.h)

Article
02/09/2023

Creates a cookie associated with the specified URL.

Syntax

BOOL InternetSetCookieA(
  [in] LPCSTR lpszUrl,
  [in] LPCSTR lpszCookieName,
  [in] LPCSTR lpszCookieData
);

Parameters

[in] lpszUrl

Pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the URL for which the cookie should be set.

[in] lpszCookieName

Pointer to a null-terminated string that specifies the name to be associated with the cookie data. If this parameter is NULL, no name is associated with the cookie.

[in] lpszCookieData

Pointer to the actual data to be associated with the URL.

Return value

Returns TRUE if successful, or FALSE otherwise. To get a specific error message, call GetLastError.

Remarks

Cookies created by InternetSetCookie without an expiration date are stored in memory and are available only in the same process that created them. Cookies that include an expiration date are stored in the windows\cookies directory.

Creating a new cookie might cause a dialog box to appear on the screen asking the user if they want to allow or disallow cookies from this site based on the privacy settings for the user.

Caution InternetSetCookie will unconditionally create a cookie even if “Block all cookies” is set in Internet Explorer. This behavior can be viewed as a breach of privacy even though such cookies are not subsequently sent back to servers while the “Block all cookies” setting is active. Applications should use InternetSetCookieEx to correctly honor the user's privacy settings.

For more cookie internals, see http://blogs.msdn.com/ieinternals/archive/2009/08/20/WinINET-IE-Cookie-Internals-FAQ.aspx.

Like all other aspects of the WinINet API, this function cannot be safely called from within DllMain or the constructors and destructors of global objects.

Note WinINet does not support server implementations. In addition, it should not be used from a service. For server implementations or services use Microsoft Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP).

Note

The wininet.h header defines InternetSetCookie as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	wininet.h
Library	Wininet.lib
DLL	Wininet.dll