Accept Cookies in Python

Question

How can I accept cookies in a python script?

Maybe you should be more specific. What are you trying to accomplish? Which framework are you using, if any? — Sebastian Rittau, Feb 08 '09 at 16:33

score 19 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '09 at 23:49

Try this:

import urllib2 
import cookielib

jar = cookielib.FileCookieJar("cookies")
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(jar))

print "Currently have %d cookies" % len(jar)
print "Getting page"
response = opener.open("http://google.com")
print response.headers
print "Got page"
print "Currently have %d cookies" % len(jar)
print jar

It should print

Currently have 0 cookies
...
Currently have 2 cookies

(Google always sets a cookie). You don't really need this much unless you want to save your cookies to disk and use them later. You should find that

urllib2.build_opener(HTTPCookieProcessor).open(url)

Takes care of most of what you want.

More info here:

Gal Bracha · Answer 2 · 2012-12-24T15:21:29.870

6

The easiest way is to use requests library.

import requests
url = 'http://www.google.com/doodles/'
r = requests.get(url)
print r.cookies

edited Dec 24 '12 at 15:21

answered Dec 17 '12 at 09:02

Gal Bracha

19,004
11
72
86

This should be the accepted answer: short and sweet, and worked. – Dio Phung Mar 24 '18 at 17:08

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 08 '09 at 14:15

3

You might want to look at cookielib.

answered Feb 08 '09 at 14:15

Can Berk Güder

109,922
25
130
137

Anonymous · Answer 4 · 2009-02-08T17:14:09.880

1

I believe you mean having a Python script that tries to speak HTTP. I suggest you to use a high-level library that handles cookies automatically. pycurl, mechanize, twill - you choose.

For Nikhil Chelliah:

I don't see what's not clear here.

Accepting a cookie happens client-side. The server can set a cookie.

edited Feb 08 '09 at 17:14

answered Feb 08 '09 at 16:14

Anonymous

3,011
4
24
23

1

A server can also get cookies from the client. Then again, "accept" might only be a valid term for the client. – Nikhil Feb 11 '09 at 22:01

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 08 '09 at 16:24

There's the cookielib library. You can also implement your own cookie storage and policies, the cookies are found in the set-cookie header of the response (Set-Cookie: name=value), then you send the back to a server in one or more Cookie headers in the request (Cookie: name=value).

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

1

It's unclear whether you want a client-side or a server-side solution.

For client-side, cookielib will work fine. This answer and a few web tutorials offer more in-depth explanations.

If this is a server-side problem, you should be using a framework that takes care of all the boilerplate. I really like how CherryPy and web.py handle them, but the API is pretty simple in any library.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

Community

1
1

answered Feb 08 '09 at 16:49

Nikhil

5,705
1
32
30

Accept Cookies in Python

6 Answers6

Linked