How can I access a non 'apex__' prefixed cookie?

Question

I have a cookie that is being dropped by an external service into my web browser (for example named my_cookie), that I would like to access within Salesforce. However, according to the documentation the getCookies() method

Only returns cookies with the "apex__" prefix set by the setCookies method.

So when I try to access with the getCookies() method:

Cookie counter = ApexPages.currentPage().getCookies().get('my_cookie');

the counter value is null, because it expects the cookie name to be named apex__my_cookie.

My only solution is to write a on page load javascript function that would copy my_cookie into a cookie named apex__my_cookie so it's accessible in Salesforce. Is this the only way to achieve what I want to do, or is there an alternative method I can use that doesn't require the javascript hack?

Answer 1

I'd suggest that you can't do it directly in Apex for a very specific reason - Security. If you can get to any cookie then you can start to pull values that Salesforce might not always want you to have.

If you do find a way to do it in Apex without client side manipulation of the cookies, I'd suggest running it past the Salesforce security team first.