Does PhantomJS support cookies?

Question

Does PhantomJS support cookies? If yes, where can I find the API details?

I am not able to figure it out after searching for a while now.

Irreverence

yes it supports cookie like browsers, what do you mean by API? – Buehler

How do I get the value of a cookie? document.cookie does not seems to get anything at all. – Irreverence

document.cookie works in all browsers except in phontomjs, seems to be some bug, there are plans to add native API code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/detail?id=354&start=100 – Buehler

Answer 1

Yes, as of 1.7 Phantom has complete cookie handling, enabled by default. Cookies are retained for the duration of the process's life.

If you'd like to retain cookies across runs of Phantom, there's a command-line option cookies-file where you can specify where to store persistent cookies.

--cookies-file=/path/to/cookies.txt specifies the file name to store the persistent cookies.

In page script, you can use the regular document.cookie property. Like in browsers, this property returns a string similar to that which would be sent in the Cookie: HTTP header.

In Phantom script, you can access cookies for a page (subject to the usual origin restrictions) via page.cookies, which returns objects.

You can also access all cookies (from all domains) using phantom.cookies.

var page = require('webpage').create();
page.open('http://example.com', function (status) {
    page.evaluate(function() {
        document.cookie; // => "test=test-value;"
    });
    page.cookies; // => [{
                  //   domain: "example.com",
                  //   expires: "Wed, 08 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT"
                  //   httponly: false,
                  //   name: "test",
                  //   path: "/",
                  //   secure: false,
                  //   value: "test-value"
                  // }]
    phantom.cookies; // contains ALL cookies in Phantom's jar
});

To add/edit/delete cookies, use the addCookie, deleteCookie, and clearCookies methods of either a WebPage object or the phantom object.

When you use the methods of a WebPage object, you only modify the cookies that are visible to the page. Access to other domains is blocked.

However, using phantom's cookie methods allow access to all cookies. phantom.addCookie requires a domain (WebPage.addCookie assumes the current domain if you don't specify one), and phantom.deleteCookie deletes any cookie matching the specified name.

Kidskin

Except that when I do console.log(document.cookie); the execution just halts. – Irreverence

Doesn't hang for me on windows when used with a jasmine unit test... but Phantom does return undefined. – Diatomic

@Niyaz: Cookies have been fixed in 1.7, and document.cookie works now. See edits. – Kidskin

+1 for phantom.addCookie/deleteCookie, that this works across domains saves a lot of hassle – Stringed

Note that the command-line option does not currently work in 2.x due to a bug. – Matti

I needed to set cookies-file in order to use a script inside another script. – Breeching

How do you add phantomjs so that phantom variable is visible to the scope, I get: "cannot find name phantom" – Countercharge

Answer 2

It does, through WebPage.addCookie() - which incidentally doesn't work neither for me nor someone else.

You can use this instead:

phantom.addCookie({
    'name': 'mycookie',
    'value': 'something really important',
    'domain': 'example.com'
})
page.open('http://example.com/url/path/', function() {
    console.log(page.cookies);
})

Redblooded

Why the (anonymous) downvote? This snippet shows another way to set cookies if the WebPage.addCookie() fails to work for some reason. – Redblooded

I cannot find the addCookie method in my node modules phantomjs-prebuilt, How do I get to it? – Countercharge

Sorry, can't help you with that - I suggest you ask another question and someone else might know the answer. – Redblooded

but How were you able to reference the method which you are using for your answer? – Countercharge

It exists, follow the link in the answer: phantomjs.org/api/webpage/method/add-cookie.html Unfortunately I don't have enough information about your problem to help you, and I haven't touched PhantomJS in years anyway... Sorry. You really need to ask a separate question if you need help. – Redblooded

It does indeed but in my 2+ version I cannot see it in my node_modules, very interesting... – Countercharge

Answer 3

The work around I had to do was to execute javascript directly. I am using Geb and did the following:

js.exec("document.cookie='PHPSESSID=${cookie}';")

When selenium fails I always fall back to javascript for functionality.

Perpetuate

Answer 4

I haven't tried it yet, but doesn't --cookies-file=/path/to/cookies.txt work?

It's the first item in API reference...

Gumbo

Yes, it writes the cookies to the specified file. but how do I get back the vale of a specific cookie? – Irreverence

yes... it seems that cookie support is not complete: code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/detail?id=299 and code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/detail?id=91 – Gumbo

Answer 5

I had graded information within session recently. You should set cookie in page object, like below (coffeescript):

@page.clearCookies()
@page.addCookie
  'name'     : "JSESSIONID"
  'value'    : "0000rN3YAlVAU0xdHkKc6BEzWj9:-1"
  'domain'   : 'some.domain.com'
  'path'     : '/'

Snuffle