Using cookies.txt file with Python Requests

I tried editing Tristan answer to add some info to it but it seems SO edit q is full therefore, I am writing this answer, since, I have struggled real bad on using existing cookies with python request.

1. First, get the cookies from the Chrome. Easiest way would be to use an extension called 'cookies.txt'

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-cookiestxt/bgaddhkoddajcdgocldbbfleckgcbcid/related

2. After downloading those cookies, use the below code to make sure that you are able to parse the file without any issues.

import re, requests, pprint
    
def parseCookieFile(cookiefile):
    """Parse a cookies.txt file and return a dictionary of key value pairs
    compatible with requests."""

    cookies = {}
    with open (cookiefile, 'r') as fp:
        for line in fp:
            if not re.match(r'^\#', line):
                lineFields = re.findall(r'[^\s]+', line) #capturing anything but empty space
                try:
                    cookies[lineFields[5]] = lineFields[6]
                except Exception as e:
                    print (e)
          
    return cookies
    
cookies = parseCookieFile('cookies.txt') #replace the filename
pprint.pprint(cookies)

3. Next, use those cookies with python request

x = requests.get('your__url', verify=False, cookies=cookies)
print (x.content)

This should save your day from going on different SO posts and trying those cookielib and other methods which never worked for me.

This worked for me:

from http.cookiejar import MozillaCookieJar
from pathlib import Path
import requests

cookies = Path('/Users/name/cookies.txt')
jar = MozillaCookieJar(cookies)
jar.load()
requests.get('https://path.to.site.com', cookies=jar)
<Response [200]>

I tried taking into account everything that Piotr Dobrogost had valiantly figured out about MozillaCookieJar but to no avail. I got fed up and just parsed the damn cookies.txt myself and now all is well:

import re
import requests

def parseCookieFile(cookiefile):
    """Parse a cookies.txt file and return a dictionary of key value pairs
    compatible with requests."""

    cookies = {}
    with open (cookiefile, 'r') as fp:
        for line in fp:
            if not re.match(r'^\#', line):
                lineFields = line.strip().split('\t')
                cookies[lineFields[5]] = lineFields[6]
    return cookies

cookies = parseCookieFile('cookies.txt')

import pprint
pprint.pprint(cookies)

r = requests.get('https://example.com', cookies=cookies)

MozillaCookieJar inherits from FileCookieJar which has the following docstring in its constructor:

Cookies are NOT loaded from the named file until either the .load() or
.revert() method is called.

You need to call .load() method then.

Also, like Jermaine Xu noted the first line of the file needs to contain either # Netscape HTTP Cookie File or # HTTP Cookie File string. Files generated by the plugin you use do not contain such a string so you have to insert it yourself. I raised appropriate bug at http://code.google.com/p/cookie-txt-export/issues/detail?id=5

EDIT

Session cookies are saved with 0 in the 5th column. If you don't pass ignore_expires=True to load() method all such cookies are discarded when loading from a file.

File session_cookie.txt:

# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
.domain.com TRUE    /   FALSE   0   name    value

Python script:

import cookielib

cj = cookielib.MozillaCookieJar('session_cookie.txt')
cj.load()
print len(cj)

Output: 0

EDIT 2

Although we managed to get cookies into the jar above they are subsequently discarded by cookielib because they still have 0 value in the expires attribute. To prevent this we have to set the expire time to some future time like so:

for cookie in cj:
    # set cookie expire date to 14 days from now
    cookie.expires = time.time() + 14 * 24 * 3600

EDIT 3

I checked both wget and curl and both use 0 expiry time to denote session cookies which means it's the de facto standard. However Python's implementation uses empty string for the same purpose hence the problem raised in the question. I think Python's behavior in this regard should be in line with what wget and curl do and that's why I raised the bug at http://bugs.python.org/issue17164
I'll note that replacing 0s with empty strings in the 5th column of the input file and passing ignore_discard=True to load() is the alternate way of solving the problem (no need to change expiry time in this case).