How to send cookies in a post request with the Python Requests library?

python cookies http-request python-requests

329,875

Solution 1

The latest release of Requests will build CookieJars for you from simple dictionaries.

import requests

cookies = {'enwiki_session': '17ab96bd8ffbe8ca58a78657a918558'}

r = requests.post('http://wikipedia.org', cookies=cookies)

Enjoy :)

Solution 2

Just to extend on the previous answer, if you are linking two requests together and want to send the cookies returned from the first one to the second one (for example, maintaining a session alive across requests) you can do:

import requests
r1 = requests.post('http://www.yourapp.com/login')
r2 = requests.post('http://www.yourapp.com/somepage',cookies=r1.cookies)

329,875

Ricardo Altamirano

Originally from Nicaragua, educated in Edinburgh and the USA, and now living primarily in London. Useful questions and answers Stack Overflow Debugging CREATE TABLE statements Logging in Python Simple string formatting in Python Reference types in C# String compression in C# using Gzip Meta Stack Overflow Book recommendation questions Answering old questions with a solution in the comments IT Security Cryptographically secure random strings in PHP LaTeX Fitting a table on a page through rotation StackExchange Flair

Updated on July 28, 2020

Comments

Ricardo Altamirano almost 4 years
I'm trying to use the Requests library to send cookies with a post request, but I'm not sure how to actually set up the cookies based on its documentation. The script is for use on Wikipedia, and the cookie(s) that need to be sent are of this form:
```
enwiki_session=17ab96bd8ffbe8ca58a78657a918558e; path=/; domain=.wikipedia.com; HttpOnly
```
However, the requests documentation quickstart gives this as the only example:
```
cookies = dict(cookies_are='working')
```
How can I encode a cookie like the above using this library? Do I need to make it with python's standard cookie library, then send it along with the POST request?
- Thomas K over 12 years
  
  Your cookie consists of a number of a=b; pairs. At a guess, use a as the key and b as the value in a dictionary.
TankorSmash almost 12 years

Additionally, you can use requests.session for this exact thing, storing cookies across multiple sessions, making calls from the returned session object instead.
Viktor Vix Jančík about 11 years

I've had to utilize this even when using sessions at times. Sessions seem to miss Set-Cookie headers in some situations.
deweydb over 10 years

@kervin this just happened to me as well. Seems like a bug in requests, because session should handle that.
Tjorriemorrie over 9 years

@TankorSmash there is definitely a bug, my cookies are not carried forward using request.session
davidA over 9 years

Is this the best way to set a (missed) cookie in a session? stackoverflow.com/a/17240616/143397
alphazwest about 7 years

Way old answer, but helped me a lot. For some reason, I'm having issues with cookie persistence when using a Session() object, but this worked beautifully.
Chris Nielsen over 6 years

Is this code supposed to place a cookie in my browser? I tried it and it didn't work for me.
ThiefMaster over 6 years

@ChrisNielsen this question/answer has nothing to do with browsers
Chris Nielsen over 6 years

@ThiefMaster: Normally, cookies live in browsers. If this answer doesn't have to do with browsers, what does it have to do with?
jouell almost 6 years

Same issue and same solution.. just FYI on requests v.2.19.1
DDay over 4 years

@ChrisNielsen: This question and the code in the answer is about setting a cookie in a Python request. The request does something similar to a browser request, but no browsers are involved.
crifan over 3 years

Additionally for @TankorSmash, how to use requests.session? can refer: stackoverflow.com/a/31571805/1616263
serv-inc over 2 years

@ChrisNielsen : cookies are an aspect of the basic http protocol, which is most often used by browsers: datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6265