Getting all cookies from WKWebView

Question

while getting cookies from UIWebView seems straightforward by using NSHTTPCookieStorage.sharedHTTPCookieStorage(), it seems WKWebView stores the cookies somewhere else.

I did some research, and I was able to get some cookies from the grabbing it from NSHTTPURLResponse object. this, however, does not contain all the cookies used by WKWebView:

func webView(webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyForNavigationResponse navigationResponse: WKNavigationResponse, decisionHandler: (WKNavigationResponsePolicy) -> Void) {

  if let httpResponse = navigationResponse.response as? NSHTTPURLResponse {
    if let headers = httpResponse.allHeaderFields as? [String: String], url = httpResponse.URL {
      let cookies = NSHTTPCookie.cookiesWithResponseHeaderFields(headers, forURL: url)

      for cookie in cookies {
        logDebug(cookie.description)

        logDebug("found cookie " + cookie.name + " " + cookie.value)
      }
    }
  }
}

Strangely, there's also a class WKWebsiteDataStore in ios 9 that responsible for managing cookies in WKWebView, however, the class does not contain a public method to retrieve the cookies data:

let storage = WKWebsiteDataStore.defaultDataStore()

storage.fetchDataRecordsOfTypes([WKWebsiteDataTypeCookies], completionHandler: { (records) -> Void in
  for record in records {
    logDebug("cookie record is " + record.debugDescription)

    for dataType in record.dataTypes {
      logDebug("data type is " + dataType.debugDescription)

      // get cookie data??
    }
  }
})

Is there a workaround for getting the cookie data?

Answer 1

Details

• Xcode 9.2, Swift 4
• Xcode 10.2 (10E125), Swift 5

Solution

extension WKWebView {

    private var httpCookieStore: WKHTTPCookieStore  { return WKWebsiteDataStore.default().httpCookieStore }

    func getCookies(for domain: String? = nil, completion: @escaping ([String : Any])->())  {
        var cookieDict = [String : AnyObject]()
        httpCookieStore.getAllCookies { cookies in
            for cookie in cookies {
                if let domain = domain {
                    if cookie.domain.contains(domain) {
                        cookieDict[cookie.name] = cookie.properties as AnyObject?
                    }
                } else {
                    cookieDict[cookie.name] = cookie.properties as AnyObject?
                }
            }
            completion(cookieDict)
        }
    }
}

Usage

// get cookies for domain
webView.getCookies(for: url.host) { data in
      print("=========================================")
      print("\(url.absoluteString)")
      print(data)
}

// get all cookies
webView.getCookies() { data in
      print("=========================================")
      print("\(url.absoluteString)")
      print(data)
}

Full sample

Info.plist

add in your Info.plist transport security setting

 <key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
 <dict>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
    <true/>
 </dict>

Code

1. Do not forget to add the solution code here
2. ViewController has embed view controller

import UIKit
import WebKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    private lazy var url = URL(string: "https://google.com")!
    private weak var webView: WKWebView?

    func initWebView(configuration: WKWebViewConfiguration) {
        if webView != nil { return }
        let webView = WKWebView(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds, configuration: configuration)
        webView.navigationDelegate = self
        webView.uiDelegate = self
        view.addSubview(webView)
        self.webView = webView
    }

    override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewWillAppear(animated)
        if webView == nil { initWebView(configuration: WKWebViewConfiguration()) }
        webView?.load(url: url)
    }
}

extension ViewController: WKNavigationDelegate {

    func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyFor navigationResponse: WKNavigationResponse, decisionHandler: @escaping (WKNavigationResponsePolicy) -> Void) {
        decisionHandler(.allow)
    }

    func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, didFinish navigation: WKNavigation!) {
        if let url = webView.url {
            webView.getCookies(for: url.host) { data in
                print("=========================================")
                print("\(url.absoluteString)")
                print(data)
            }
        }
    }
}

extension ViewController: WKUIDelegate {

    func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, createWebViewWith configuration: WKWebViewConfiguration, for navigationAction: WKNavigationAction, windowFeatures: WKWindowFeatures) -> WKWebView? {
        // push new screen to the navigation controller when need to open url in another "tab"
        if let url = navigationAction.request.url, navigationAction.targetFrame == nil {
            let viewController = ViewController()
            viewController.initWebView(configuration: configuration)
            viewController.url = url
            DispatchQueue.main.async { [weak self] in
                self?.navigationController?.pushViewController(viewController, animated: true)
            }
            return viewController.webView
        }
        return nil
    }
}

extension WKWebView {

    func load(urlString: String) {
        if let url = URL(string: urlString) { load(url: url) }
    }

    func load(url: URL) { load(URLRequest(url: url)) }
}

Answer 2

if (@available(iOS 11.0, *)) {
  [webView.configuration.websiteDataStore.httpCookieStore
      getAllCookies:^(NSArray<NSHTTPCookie *> *_Nonnull cookies) {
        NSURLRequest *request =
            [[NSURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:self.URL]; //your URL
        NSURLSession *session = [NSURLSession sharedSession];
        NSURLSessionDataTask *task = [session
            dataTaskWithRequest:request
              completionHandler:^(NSData *responseData, NSURLResponse *response,
                                  NSError *error) {
                //Do Something
              }];
        [task resume];
        [session.configuration.HTTPCookieStorage storeCookies:cookies forTask:task];
      }];
}

Answer 3

For iOS 11, without any extensions:

func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, didFinish navigation: WKNavigation!) {
    self.webView.configuration.websiteDataStore.httpCookieStore.getAllCookies { cookies in
        for cookie in cookies {
            //...
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

This post has useful information on cookie handling with WKWebView. According to this you should be able to set and retrieve cookies using the standard NSURLCache and NSHTTPCookie. He also refers to using WKProccessPool as per Stephan's comment.

Answer 5

In practice, I found in the method of "decidePolicyForNavigationResponse", you can use following way to fetch cookies, but the sad thing is it's not a complete/whole list for a session.

let response = navigationResponse.response as! NSHTTPURLResponse
        let headFields = response.allHeaderFields as! [String:String]

        let cookies = NSHTTPCookie.cookiesWithResponseHeaderFields(headFields, forURL: response.URL!)

Answer 6

Finally, httpCookieStore for WKWebsiteDataStore landed in iOS 11.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebsitedatastore?changes=latest_minor