Using LWP (or some other module) to Dowload HTML with Cookie Session ID

[Leudwinus]

Hello Fellow Monks,

I am trying to download the HTML of a URL which requires authentication (username and password). Using curl, I am able to successfully do this via:

curl https://example.com --cookie "session=536...035a" -o "HTML_output.txt"

where the session ID is the one I obtained via the browser's developer tools function.

I am trying to replicate this using a more "native" Perl approach and using the LWP module, I have the following code which allows me to get the HTML of a given URL that does not require any authentication:

use LWP;

my $url     = "https://example.com";
my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new( );
my $resp    = $browser->get($url);

print $resp->content, "\n";

Is there a way using LWP (or some other module) to also include the session ID from the browser cookie?

Thank you in advance.

As a quick update, I have modified my code to use HTTP::Cookies::Netscape as follows:

use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP;
use HTTP::Cookies::Netscape;

my $url = "https://example.com";
my $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies::Netscape->new(
    file  => "/path/to/cookies.txt",
    );
my $browser = LWP::UserAgent->new( );
$browser->cookie_jar( $cookie_jar );
my $resp = $browser->get($url);

print $resp->content, "\n";

Unfortunately, when I run that, the response that comes back tells me that I still need to supply a proper username and password, even though my session is still valid on the browser. I used the Firefox add-on "cookies.txt" to download a cookies.txt file which looks like:

# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
.example.com    TRUE    /    TRUE    1984932267    session    5361...1
+329

[Corion]

An easy way to get a start is by converting your Curl command to a Perl program using (my) Curl to Perl converter:

#!perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new( 'send_te' => '0' );
my $r  = HTTP::Request->new(
    'GET' => 'https://example.com/',
    [
        'Accept'     => '*/*',
        'User-Agent' => 'curl/7.55.1',
        'Cookie'     => 'session=536...035a'
    ],

);
my $res = $ua->request( $r, ':content_file' => 'HTML_output.txt' );



__END__

Created from curl command line
curl https://example.com --cookie "session=536...035a" -o "HTML_output
+.txt"

I'm not sure if your Firefox stores its cookies in a cookies.txt file still or if it stores them in an SQLite database nowadays.

[Leudwinus]

Thank you, Corion for that example and link to your page which I have bookmarked!

It looks like the content I need is then stored in $res->{_content}. I had to first install LWP::UserAgent and LWP::Protocol::https to get this to work though.

I guess I need to get more familiar with the LWP, LWP::UserAgent and HTTP::Request modules.

What is the difference between LWP::UserAgent and Mojo::UserAgent, the latter which was also suggested to me to try to solve this?

Thanks again!

[Corion]

No - please use $res->decoded_content instead of reaching into the HTTP::Response hash.

The difference between LWP::UserAgent and Mojo::UserAgent is mostly that LWP::UserAgent doesn't allow for parallel requests. Mojo::UserAgent is a bit more complex due to allowing for parallelism, but it also offers some more convenience stuff like handling JSON replies directly.

[Discipulus]

Hello Leudwinus,

I have started a new thread DBI DBD::SQLite unable to open Firefox cookies.sqlite database related to your original question, but starting from another point, you might be interested in it too.

L*

[Leudwinus]

I saw that thread earlier today! I am following it as best I can. Apologies that I don't know enough yet to help you but I will be interested in what you find regarding interrogating Firefox cookies directly via SQLite.