CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cookiescurl
dmz73
dmz73

Reputation: 1608

Send cookies with curl

I am using curl to retrieve cookies like so:

curl -c cookies.txt url

then I parse the cookie I want from the cookies.txt file and send the request again with the cookie

curl -b "name=value" url

Is this the correct way to send the cookie? Is there a simpler way?

Upvotes: 73

Views: 118227

Answers (4)

Daniel Stenberg
Daniel Stenberg

Reputation: 58004

You can also use -b to specify a cookie file from which to read the cookies.

In many situations using -c and -b to the same file is what you want:

curl -b cookies.txt -c cookies.txt http://example.com

Further

Using only -c will make curl start with no cookies but still parse and understand cookies and if redirects or multiple URLs are used, it will then use the received cookies within the single invoke before it writes them all to the output file in the end.

The -b option feeds a set of initial cookies into curl so that it knows about them at start, and it activates curl's cookie parser so that it'll parse and use incoming cookies as well.

See Also

The cookies chapter in the Everything curl book.

Upvotes: 106

Victor Choy
Victor Choy

Reputation: 4246

Very annoying, no cookie file exmpale on the official website https://ec.haxx.se/http/http-cookies.

Finnaly, I find it does not work, if your file content is just copyied like this

foo1=bar;foo2=bar2

I gusess the format must looks the style said by @Agustí Sánchez . You can test it by -c to create a cookie file on a website.

So try this way, it works

curl -H "Cookie:`cat ./my.cookie`"   http://xxxx.com

You can just copy the cookie from chrome console network tab.

Upvotes: 1

reachlin
reachlin

Reputation: 4792

if you have Firebug installed on Firefox, just open the url. In the network panel, right-click and select Copy as cURL. You can see all curl parameters for this web call.

Upvotes: 11

Agustí Sánchez
Agustí Sánchez

Reputation: 11223

.example.com TRUE / FALSE 1560211200 MY_VARIABLE MY_VALUE

The cookies file format apparently consists of a line per cookie and each line consists of the following seven tab-delimited fields:

  • domain - The domain that created AND that can read the variable.
  • flag - A TRUE/FALSE value indicating if all machines within a given domain can access the variable. This value is set automatically by the browser, depending on the value you set for domain.
  • path - The path within the domain that the variable is valid for.
  • secure - A TRUE/FALSE value indicating if a secure connection with the domain is needed to access the variable.
  • expiration - The UNIX time that the variable will expire on. UNIX time is defined as the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970 00:00:00 GMT.
  • name - The name of the variable.
  • value - The value of the variable.

From http://www.cookiecentral.com/faq/#3.5

Upvotes: 17

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