Cookiejar use in an opener

Question

I have the following code at the moment:

tw_jar = cookielib.CookieJar()
tw_jar.set_cookie(c1)
tw_jar.set_cookie(c2)

o = urllib2.build_opener( urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(tw_jar) )
urllib2.install_opener( o )

Now I later in my code I don't want to use any of the cookies (Also new cookies created meanwhile).

Can I do a simple tw_jar.clear() or do I need to build and install the opener again to get rid of all cookies used in the requests?

Do you need to clear old cookies, but still continue processing new ones or don't use any cookie at all? — jcollado, Dec 21 '11 at 19:41

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 21 '11 at 18:32

This is how HTTPCookieProcessor is defined in my Python installation:

class HTTPCookieProcessor(BaseHandler):
  def __init__(self, cookiejar=None):
    import cookielib
    if cookiejar is None:
        cookiejar = cookielib.CookieJar()
    self.cookiejar = cookiejar

  def http_request(self, request):
    self.cookiejar.add_cookie_header(request)
    return request

  def http_response(self, request, response):
    self.cookiejar.extract_cookies(response, request)
    return response

  https_request = http_request
  https_response = http_response

As only a reference is saved, you can just manipulate the original tw_jar instance and it will affect all future requests.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 21 '11 at 18:33

If you don't want any cookies, I'd recommend to create a new opener. However, if for some reason you want to keep the old one, removing the cookie processor from the list of handlers should work:

o.handlers = [h for h in o.handlers
              if not isinstance(h, urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor)]

Cookiejar use in an opener

2 Answers2