Python: How to get and set Cookies when using Requests

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# Python: How to get and set Cookies when using Requests

Use the Session class to set and get cookies when using the requests module in Python.

The class creates a Session object that stores the cookies and all requests that are made handle cookies automatically.

main.py

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import requests


session = requests.Session()
print(session.cookies.get_dict()) # {}

response = session.get('http://google.com')

# {'AEC': 'Ad49MVGzf2rt5u6ObCPLjVzjrRqRMuYhCFG3iH7Ui8-banKZJ3dpZ_4wCA'}
print(session.cookies.get_dict())

using cookies in python requests

The code for this article is available on GitHub

Make sure you have the requests module installed to be able to run the code sample.

shell

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pip install requests

# or with pip3
pip3 install requests

The Session object enables you to persist cookies across requests.

The object persists cookies across all requests that were made using the Session instance.

The Session object has all of the methods of the main requests API.

The get_dict() method returns a Python dictionary of the name-value pairs of cookies.

You can also use Sessions as context managers.

main.py

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import requests


with requests.Session() as session:
    print(session.cookies.get_dict())  # {}

    response = session.get('http://google.com')

    # {'AEC': 'Ad49MVGzf2rt5u6ObCPLjVzjrRqRMuYhCFG3iH7Ui8-banKZJ3dpZ_4wCA'}
    print(session.cookies.get_dict())

The code for this article is available on GitHub

Make sure the code that accesses the Session object is inside the indented block.

# Accessing the path and the domain when using Cookies with requests

It is very likely, that you will also have to access the domain and the path to which the request was made when accessing the cookies.

You can use a list comprehension to construct a list of dictionaries that contain the path and domain.

main.py

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import requests


session = requests.Session()
print(session.cookies.get_dict())  # {}

print('-' * 50)

response = session.get('http://google.com')

# {'AEC': 'Ad49MVGzf2rt5u6ObCPLjVzjrRqRMuYhCFG3iH7Ui8-banKZJ3dpZ_4wCA'}
print(session.cookies.get_dict())

print('-' * 50)

result = [
    {'name': c.name, 'value': c.value, 'domain': c.domain, 'path': c.path}
    for c in session.cookies
]

# [{'name': 'AEC', 'value': 'Ad49MVGjcnQKK55wgCKVdZpw4PDgEgicIVB278lObJdf4eXaYChtDZcGLA', 'domain': '.google.com', 'path': '/'}]
print(result)

get path and domain while using cookies in requests

The code for this article is available on GitHub

We used a list comprehension to iterate over the RequestCookieJar object (session.cookies) and returned a dictionary on each iteration.

The dictionary contains the name and value of the cookie, the path and the domain.

# Sending cookies with a request

If you want to send cookies with a request, set the cookies keyword argument.

main.py

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import requests

session = requests.Session()

response = session.get(
    'https://httpbin.org/cookies',
    cookies={'my-cookie': 'my-value'}
)

# {
#   "cookies": {
#     "my-cookie": "my-value"
#   }
# }
print(response.text)

send cookies with request

The code for this article is available on GitHub

We set the cookies keyword argument to a dictionary of key-value pairs.

# Accessing the cookies attribute directly on the `Response` object

In more recent versions of the requests module, you can also access the cookies attribute directly on the Response object.

main.py

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import requests

response = requests.get('http://google.com', timeout=30)

# {'AEC': 'Ad49MVE4KO7sQX_pRIifPtDvL666jJcj34BmOFeETG9YU_1mu1SINQN-Q_A'}
print(response.cookies.get_dict())

result = [
    {'name': c.name, 'value': c.value, 'domain': c.domain, 'path': c.path}
    for c in response.cookies
]

# [{'name': 'AEC', 'value': 'Ad49MVGjcnQKK55wgCKVdZpw4PDgEgicIVB278lObJdf4eXaYChtDZcGLA', 'domain': '.google.com', 'path': '/'}]
print(result)

accessing cookies attribute directly on response object

The code for this article is available on GitHub

Notice that we didn't instantiate the Session class.

We simply accessed the cookies attribute on the Response object and called the get_dict() method on the RequestCookieJar object.

However, the management of cookies is automated when you use a Session object.

This means that you won't have to send the cookies explicitly:

main.py

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import requests

session = requests.Session()

response = session.get(
    'https://httpbin.org/cookies',
    cookies={'my-cookie': 'my-value'}
)

# {
#   "cookies": {
#     "my-cookie": "my-value"
#   }
# }
print(response.text)

Because it will be done for you automatically.

# Saving the `requests` cookies in a file and restoring them

You can also save the requests cookies in a file.

main.py

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import json
import requests

response = requests.get('http://google.com', timeout=30)

with open('cookies.txt', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    json.dump(
        requests.utils.dict_from_cookiejar(response.cookies),
        f
    )

The code for this article is available on GitHub

The cookies.txt file stores the following JSON string.

main.py

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{"AEC": "Ad49MVEu4N64Tk1gEROw417s9FgcqdqeIeVZ8eL9m-HQldzOrLAF2HvxHQ"}

Notice that we used the requests.utils.dict_from_cookiejar method to create a dictionary from the RequestCookieJar object.

We then passed the dictionary and the file object to the json.dump method.

The json.dump() method serializes the supplied object as a JSON formatted stream and writes it to a file.

You can then read and restore the cookies from the file.

main.py

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import json
import requests

session = requests.session()

with open('cookies.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    cookies = requests.utils.cookiejar_from_dict(json.load(f))
    session.cookies.update(cookies)

# {'AEC': 'Ad49MVEu4N64Tk1gEROw417s9FgcqdqeIeVZ8eL9m-HQldzOrLAF2HvxHQ'}
print(session.cookies.get_dict())

The code for this article is available on GitHub

We created a brand new Session object but you can use an existing Session.

We used the json.load() method to convert the contents of the file to a native Python dictionary.
We used the requests.utils.cookiejar_from_dict method to create a RequestCookieJar object from the dictionary.
The last step is to update the cookies of the Session object with the newly read cookies.

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Python: How to get and set Cookies when using Requests

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