cookie-pot

Cookie jar style helper function for Node.js HTTP requests to assist test and development of services.

Usage

const CookiePot = require('cookie-pot');

const pot = new CookiePot();

const cookieString = pot.deposit(response1);
pot.deposit(response2);
pot.deposit(response3);

const updatedCookieString = pot.cookieString;

CookiePot will

• merge in new cookies from the response header strings
• update the values of existing cookies
• remove cookies if the value is set to the empty string

The cookie string string returned by the deposit() method and the cookieString property can be used for the Cookie request header verbatim.

To get a single cookie value from the cookiePot

const myCookie = pot.getCookie('myCookie');

If an exact match is not found, CookiePot will return the first cookie that includes the given name.

To clear the contents of the cookie pot

pot.clear();

A cookie pot can be built from an existing cookie string (will wipe the existing content)

const cookieString = 'id=2a9; X-TOKEN=pjb; .AspNetCore.Antiforgery.nUm79WDWtTU=xyz; LANG=de';
const pot = new CookiePot();
pot.buildPotFromCookieString(cookieString);

To set or overwrite a cookie value

pot.setCookie('myCookie', '123');

To remove a cookie, set it to the empty string

pot.setCookie('myCookie', '');

To build a cookie pot from request headers copied and pasted from the browser

const requestHeader = `Accept-Language
    en-GB,en;q=0.5
Cookie
    VIS_ID=123; _abck=234~0~YAAQ/0; SessionCookie=345; MY_COOKIE=PCY; amaze=34=34; last=1
    1
Host
    www.example.com`;
pot.addPossibleCookies(requestHeader);

Supported responses

CookiePot currently understands response header strings that look like

content-length: 29384
setcookie: mycookie=123; expires=Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT; path=/; secure
setcookie: LANG=en; expires=Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT;

CookiePot also understands request responses that includes a headers key that looks like (as returned by Axios)

    headers: {
        'date': 'Wed, 01 Dec 2021 10:23:43 GMT',
        'content-type': 'text/html;charset=UTF-8',
        'content-length': '362212',
        'set-cookie': [
            'id=2a9;Path=/;Expires=Tue, 21-Dec-2021 12:01:46 UTC;HttpOnly;Secure',
            'HASH=f5c8;Path=/;Expires=Thu, 01-Dec-2022 10:23:42 UTC',
        ],
    },

Axios example

const axios = require('axios');
const CookiePot = require('cookie-pot');

login();

async function login() {
    const url = `https://www.example.com/Account/SignIn`;
    const userAgent =
        'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.4472.114 Safari/537.36';

    let options;
    let response;
    options = { headers: { 'User-Agent': userAgent } };
    response = await axios.get(url, options);
    let pot = new CookiePot();
    pot.deposit(response);

    const requestVerificationToken = pot.getCookie('Antiforgery');
    const signinPayload = `Form.Email=username%40example.com&Form.Password=pass123&Form.RememberMe=true&__RequestVerificationToken=${requestVerificationToken}&Form.RememberMe=true`;
    options = {
        data: signinPayload,
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
            'User-Agent': userAgent,
            'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
            'Cookie': pot.cookieString,
        },
        maxRedirects: 0,
        validateStatus: (status) => {
            return status >= 200 && status < 400;
        },
    };
    response = await axios(url, options);
    pot.deposit(response);
}

With Axios in addition to setting maxRedirects: 0 you have to supply a validateStatus function that returns true for 3xx status codes otherwise Axios will throw an error.

SuperAgent example

const superagent = require('superagent');
const CookiePot = require('cookie-pot');

login();

async function login() {
    const url = `https://www.example.com/Account/SignIn`;
    const userAgent =
        'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.4472.114 Safari/537.36';

    let response;
    let pot = new CookiePot();
    response = await superagent.get(url).set('User-Agent', userAgent);
    pot.deposit(response);

    const requestVerificationToken = pot.getCookie('Antiforgery');
    const signinPayload = `Form.Email=username%40example.com&Form.Password=pass123&Form.RememberMe=true&__RequestVerificationToken=${requestVerificationToken}&Form.RememberMe=true`;
    try {
        response = await superagent
            .post(url)
            .redirects(0)
            .set('User-Agent', userAgent)
            .set('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded')
            .set('Cookie', pot.cookieString)
            .send(signinPayload);
    } catch (error) {
        response = error.response;
    }
    pot.deposit(response);
}

With SuperAgent you set redirects(0) so you can see the 3xx response headers, but it will also throw an error. You have to catch the error and get the response from the error object.

node-fetch example

import CookiePot from 'cookie-pot';
import fetch from 'node-fetch';

login();

async function login() {
    const url = `https://www.example.com/Account/SignIn`;
    const userAgent =
        'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.4472.114 Safari/537.36';

    let options;
    let response;
    options = { headers: { 'User-Agent': userAgent } };
    response = await fetch(url, options);
    let pot = new CookiePot();
    pot.deposit(response.headers.raw());

    const requestVerificationToken = pot.getCookie('Antiforgery');
    const signinPayload = `Form.Email=username%40example.com&Form.Password=pass123&Form.RememberMe=true&__RequestVerificationToken=${requestVerificationToken}&Form.RememberMe=true`;
    options = {
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
            'User-Agent': userAgent,
            'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
            'Cookie': pot.cookieString,
        },
        body: signinPayload,
        redirect: 'manual',
    };
    response = await fetch(url, options);
    pot.deposit(response.headers.raw());
}

To install node-fetch, put "type": "module" in your package.json and run npm install node-fetch.

To stop node-fetch following redirects, set redirect: 'manual' in the options.

native node fetch (v18+) example

import CookiePot from 'cookie-pot';

login();

async function login() {
    const url = `https://www.example.com/Account/SignIn`;
    const userAgent =
        'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36';

    let options;
    let response;
    options = { headers: { 'User-Agent': userAgent } };
    response = await fetch(url, options);
    let pot = new CookiePot();
    pot.deposit(response);

    const requestVerificationToken = pot.getCookie('Antiforgery');
    const signinPayload = `Form.Email=example%40example.com&Form.Password=pass123&Form.RememberMe=true&__RequestVerificationToken=${requestVerificationToken}&Form.RememberMe=true`;
    options = {
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
            'User-Agent': userAgent,
            'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
            'Cookie': pot.cookieString,
        },
        body: signinPayload,
        redirect: 'manual',
    };
    response = await fetch(url, options);
    if (response.status !== 302) {
        console.log(`Login failed: ${response.status} ${response.statusText}`);
        return;
    }
    console.log(`Login successful: ${response.status} ${response.statusText}`);
    pot.deposit(response);
    console.log(pot.cookieString);
}

got example

import CookiePot from 'cookie-pot';
import got from 'got';

login();

async function login() {
    const signinUrl = `https://www.example.com/Account/SignIn`;
    const userAgent =
        'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.4472.114 Safari/537.36';

    let response;
    response = await got(signinUrl, { headers: { 'User-Agent': userAgent } });
    let pot = new CookiePot();
    pot.deposit(response);

    const requestVerificationToken = pot.getCookie('Antiforgery');
    const signinPayload = `Form.Email=username%40example.com&Form.Password=pass123&Form.RememberMe=true&__RequestVerificationToken=${requestVerificationToken}&Form.RememberMe=true`;
    response = await got.post(signinUrl, {
        headers: {
            'User-Agent': userAgent,
            'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
            'Cookie': pot.cookieString,
        },
        body: signinPayload,
        followRedirect: false,
    });
    pot.deposit(response.headers);
}

To install got, put "type": "module" in your package.json and run npm install got.

To stop got following redirects, set followRedirect: false in the options.