Access renderer process cookies by electron's main process - node.js

Question

I've got some issues with authentication (using cookies and session) and my electron-app
The use case:
User logs in
Session created and cookie is stored. (by app-bl module)
I read about electron-session and electron-cookies (https://electronjs.org/docs/all?query=coo#class-cookies) but nothing works.
Application structure:
electron-app
---express-app
------app-bl
------react-client
Electron version: 3.0.13
I used this to use express within electron:
https://github.com/frankhale/electron-with-express
It seems like electrons main process doesn't know about cookies created by the rendered process.
electron/main.js:
const electron = require('electron');
const { app, BrowserWindow, session } = electron
let mainWindow;
function createWindow() {
const screenElectron = electron.screen;
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
show: false,
autoHideMenuBar: true,
icon: `${__dirname}/assets/icon.ico`
});
mainWindow.webContents.openDevTools();
mainWindow.loadURL(`file://${__dirname}/index.html`);
mainWindow.on("close", () => {
mainWindow.webContents.send("stop-server");
});
mainWindow.once('ready-to-show', () => {
mainWindow.show()
})
mainWindow.on("closed", () => {
mainWindow = null;
});
}
express-app/index.js:
const ev = require('express-validation');
const Path = require('path')
const Express = require('express')
const BodyParser = require('body-parser')
const CookieParser = require('cookie-parser');
const Session = require('express-session');
const App = require('./app/index.js')
// Init server
const express = Express()
const router = Express.Router()
const port = parseInt(process.argv[2]) || process.env.PORT || 5001
const ip = "0.0.0.0"
express.use(BodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }))
express.use(BodyParser.json())
express.use(CookieParser())
express.use(Session({
key: 'sessionId',
secret: 'key',
resave: false,
saveUninitialized: false,
cookie: {
expires: 600000
}
}))
// Init Application
const app = App({ express, router })
// Static content
express.use(Express.static(Path.join(__dirname, './client/dist')))
express.use('/*', Express.static(Path.join(__dirname, './client/dist/index.html')))
// Error handler
express.use(function (err, req, res, next) {
console.log(err)
if (err instanceof ev.ValidationError) {
return res.status(err.status).json({
status: err.status,
message: err.statusText
});
}
return res.status(err.status).json({
status: err.status,
message: err.message
});
});
(async () => {
try {
await app.init()
const server = await app.start(ip, port);
console.log("Server started http://%s:%s", ip, port)
} catch (e) {
console.log(e);
process.exit(1);
}
})()
And this is how I'm creating the session after successful login in app-bl module:
async function loginHandler(req, res, next) {
const username = req.body.username
const password = req.body.password
try {
const user = await authService.login(username, password)
req.session.userId = user.id;
res.json({ user })
} catch (error) {
error.status = 500
next(error)
}
}
I managed to create cookies inside main process and I can see then using console.log, but nothing is showing inside devTools, I tried this code:
const mainSession = mainWindow.webContents.session
const cookie = {
url: 'http://localhost:8000',
name: 'sessionId',
domain: 'localhost',
expirationDate: 99999999999999
}
mainSession.cookies.set(cookie, (error) => {
if (error) {
console.error(error)
}
})
mainSession.cookies.get({}, (error, cookies) => {
console.log(cookies)
})
I have the feeling I'm missing something here.

Answer 1

This package works: https://github.com/heap/electron-cookies
It seems to use Local Storage to emulate cookies. So you can read/write cookies using normal JavaScript syntax, and hopefully your application won't know the difference.