Re: base64-encoding in cookies?

On Wed, 2007-02-07 at 13:49 -0600, Fletcher Mattox wrote: > I wrote: > > > A campus web server (not under my control) returns an authentication > > string in a cookie named AUTH. The cookie's value is an encrypted, > > base64 encoded string. Unfortunately, when I examine $_COOKIE['AUTH'], > > it is clear that all of the '+' characters have been replaced with a ' > > ' > > character in the base64 string. Why is this? Obviously, this corrupts > > the data and makes it impossible to base64-decode the string correctly. > > I believe this is a php issue and not, say, an apache issue because a > > perl program can correctly authenticate the same cookie based on perl's > > $ENV{'HTTP_COOKIE'}. i.e., the perl cookie contains the original '+'. > > Does anyone know how to make php (v5.1.5) do the right thing with base64 > > encoded cookies? > > This problem seems to be > > http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=35523 > > where it was dismissed as "Bogus" without any explanation why. It seems > that '+' characters are intentionally converted to spaces in all cookies. > This makes no sense to me. Can someone explain it? I haven't looked, but there's a good chance it's part of the specs. Same thing happens in URLs. Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------'