Curl with cookies to Golang HTTP request

Question

I'm trying to get info from an old site that utilizes netscape HTTP cookie files to login. Here's my curl requests:

// Do login request and get cookie
curl -c cookies -X POST -i -v https://foobar.com/login

// Use generated cookie file to get more data about the user
curl -b cookies -i -v https://foobar.com/data

In PHP, you could do something like:

// Do login request and get cookie
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://foobar/login');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, './cookies');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, './cookies');  
$user = curl_exec($ch);

// Use generated cookie file to get data about the user 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://foobar/login');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, './cookies');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, './cookies');  
$data = curl_exec($ch);

Is there a way to do this using the std http package in Go?

Use an [`http.CookieJar`](http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#CookieJar) to manage cookies between multiple requests. For introduction see related question [What is the difference between cookie and cookiejar?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31270461/what-is-the-difference-between-cookie-and-cookiejar) — icza, Aug 14 '16 at 08:14

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 14 '16 at 07:59

To save a cookie:

// do whatever is needed to login and get the cookie
response, err := http.PostForm("http://localhost:8080/login", url.Values{"username": {"foo"}, "password": {"bar"}})
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

var savedCookie *http.Cookie

for _, cookie := range response.Cookies() {
    if cookie.Name == "secret" {
        savedCookie = cookie
    }
}

Once you have the cookie you can build another request and add the cookie(s):

client := http.Client{}
request, err := http.NewRequest("GET", "http://localhost:8080/protected", nil)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

request.AddCookie(savedCookie)
response, err := client.Do(request)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

If you have multiple Cookies you can use a CookieJar and set them directly in the Client:

client := &http.Client{
    Jar: jar,
}

Curl with cookies to Golang HTTP request

1 Answers1