SCAYT cookies and MVC

I posted in the generic section, so i will retry here with a more direct issue:

I have an MVC app that uses CKEditor. We had the scayt feature enabled and noticed that it was writing cookies to the client browser. Once IE (any flavor) hit the maximum number of allowable cookies, it seems to arbitrarily replace cookies, the main important ones being the AST.Net Session and Authentication cookies, causing our user's to get logged out of the site randomly. From what I could tell, the scayt cookies seemed to relate to the url path, which would make since in a non-MVC application, however, since we are using MVC, certain pages have a single function, but the url can appear to be unique for an almost infinite number of combinations. For example, in a normal webforms application I am assuming (and this might be wrong, but it seems to make sense) if the scayt cookie got written once for this url: www.domain.com/ticket/detail.aspx?id=1234, it wouldnt be a problem since the dynamic nature of the page is the id in the querystring. However, in an MVC application, www.domain/ticket/detail/1234 is the equivalent so if the ticket id is 1235, scayt is writing a cookie for that, and yet another for 1264, etc. You can imagine how quickly you would blow through the IE max (of 20 I believe), if the entire purpose of the application is to allow users to manage tickets and each member of the 100+ person team looks at at least 1500 tickets a day....

So my issue is this: is there a way to change the way scayt cookies are written, or at least tell it to ignore the ASP.Net and Auth cookies when it gets to the point where it is writing new cookies? Can you disable the cookie writing altogether? If the answer is yes, but the performance is degraded, that is fine. I just need to know if I am going to have to completely ditch CKEditor since the client requires the Spell Checker functionality.

Any assistance on this would be greatly appreciated.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 00:28

alfonsoml

Joined: 31/12/2006

Posts: 3737

Re: SCAYT cookies and MVC

Firstly: the only one that drops the cookies is IE, the client code doesn't tell it: drop those cookies and keep these ones.

Second: I would file a ticket so that the cookies generated by the spellchecker don't include the path of the page, it seems more logical that such cookies are unique in a server, or at least that it's an option.

Third: be careful about the custom dictionary if you are already having issues with cookies:

Initially the User Dictionary is stored in a Cookie. However, Cookies are limited in size. When the User Dictionary grows to a point where it cannot be stored in a Cookie, then the dictionary may be stored on our server. To store your personal dictionary on our server you should specify a name for your dictionary. If you already have a stored dictionary, please type it's name and click the Restore button.

And I know that this won't help you, but you could suggest your users to switch to a different browser in the meanwhile. At least I hope that they aren't using IE6.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 00:52

pachrist81

Joined: 04/03/2011

Posts: 5

Re: SCAYT cookies and MVC

Yeah, sorry I didnt clarify that, but yes I am aware that this is an IE only issue. Unfortunately, the client requires this in IE since 99% of their 1000+ users use either IE6, 7 or 8. And yeah, I said IE6. Believe me, that is one of the largest points of contention at the moment, but that isn't really the major issue right now.

I filed a ticket, so thanks for that suggestion... Not sure how "actively" they monitor these tickets, but hopefully someone will see it and agree that its a legit issue.

We aren't dealing with the user dictionary at this time, but I will file it away as another potential issue down the road...

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 11:38

alfonsoml

Joined: 31/12/2006

Posts: 3737

Re: SCAYT cookies and MVC

This is slightly offtopic, but you should really move off from IE6, even Microsoft is stating it: http://ie6countdown.com/

If you use standards it's quite easy to make a page compatible across all the current browsers, including IE9.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 15:12

pachrist81

Joined: 04/03/2011

Posts: 5

Re: SCAYT cookies and MVC

No worries about offtopic...

I 100% agree and we have been advising this client for at least 2 years that we were going to drop support for IE6, but they are a large enterprise who doesn't push change easily at all. The red tape is ridiculous. We even added verbiage marking up IE6 related support by 250% and they still continue to demand support. Oh well, more money for us for now...

Back on topic though, I saw you commented on my bug that i submitted (http://dev.ckeditor.com/ticket/7275) Was wondering how the whole process works in terms of changes. Since I have never posted on this ticket board before I dont really understand if you were suggesting that I make the change to my own code, or if you were suggesting the change to the dev team. (Also, I don't know if you are actually a member of the dev team so I don't know your role in this)

Thanks again for helping.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 15:44

alfonsoml

Joined: 31/12/2006

Posts: 3737

Re: SCAYT cookies and MVC

The SCAYT code is provided by spellchecker.net and usually any related change is done by them. You don't have any option to change this code, it seems to be located at the core libraries that are loaded from their servers at runtime.
Fortunately, they usually take care of all their bugs and provide fixes, but as it happens with every company, it depends on what's their current schedule and plans.

Sun, 03/06/2011 - 16:18

pachrist81

Joined: 04/03/2011

Posts: 5

Re: SCAYT cookies and MVC

So by posting a bug on the dev board for ckeditor, will that also get pushed through to them or do I need to post this as a bug on their support site as well?