Node Express setting cookies - node.js

Question

I may be misunderstanding here.
I have a node server running at localhost:3000, and a React app running at localhost:8080.
The React app is making a get request to the node server - my server code for this looks like:
const cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');
const crypto = require('crypto');
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.use(cookieParser());
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
let user_token = req.cookies['house_user']; // always empty
if (user_token) {
// if the token exists, great!
} else {
crypto.randomBytes(24, function(err, buffer) {
let token = buffer.toString('hex');
res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', 'http://localhost:8080');
res.cookie('house_user', token, {maxAge: 9000000000, httpOnly: true, secure: false });
res.send(token);
});
}
});
app.listen(3000, () => console.log('Example app listening on port 3000!'))
I'm trying to set the house_user token, so that I can later keep track of requests from users.
However, the token is not being set on the user (request from localhost:8080) - the house_user token is always empty (in fact, req.cookies is entirely empty). Do I need to do something else?

Answer 1

I just tried the code below (and it worked). As a reminder, you can just paste this in myNodeTest.js, then run node myNodeTest.js and visit http://localhost:3003. If it does work, then it probably means you're having CORS issues.
[EDIT] withCredentials:true should do the trick with axios.
axios.get('localhost:3000', {withCredentials: true}).then(function (res) { console.log(res) })
const express = require('express')
const cookieParser = require('cookie-parser')
const crypto = require('crypto');
const port = 3003
app.use(cookieParser());
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
let user_token = req.cookies['house_user']; // always empty
if (user_token) {
// if the token exists, great!
} else {
crypto.randomBytes(24, function(err, buffer) {
let token = buffer.toString('hex');
res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', 'http://localhost:8080');
res.cookie('house_user', token, {maxAge: 9000000000, httpOnly: true, secure: true });
res.append('Set-Cookie', 'house_user=' + token + ';');
res.send(token);
});
}
});
app.get('/', (request, response) => {
response.send('Hello from Express!')
})
app.listen(port, (err) => {
if (err) {
return console.log('something bad happened', err)
}
console.log(`server is listening on ${port}`)
})

Answer 2

Making my comment into an answer since it seemed to have solved your problem.
Since you are running on http, not https, you need to remove the secure: true from the cookie as that will make the cookie only be sent over an https connection which will keep the browser from sending it back to you over your http connection.
Also, remove the res.append(...) as res.cookie() is all that is needed.