[javascript] Make Axios send cookies in its requests automatically

I am sending requests from the client to my Express.js server using Axios.

I set a cookie on the client and I want to read that cookie from all Axios requests without adding them manually to request by hand.

This is my clientside request example:

axios.get(`some api url`).then(response => ...

I tried to access headers or cookies by using these properties in my Express.js server:

req.headers
req.cookies

Neither of them contained any cookies. I am using cookie parser middleware:

app.use(cookieParser())

How do I make Axios send cookies in requests automatically?

Edit:

I set cookie on the client like this:

import cookieClient from 'react-cookie'

...
let cookie = cookieClient.load('cookie-name')
if(cookie === undefined){
      axios.get('path/to/my/cookie/api').then(response => {
        if(response.status == 200){
          cookieClient.save('cookie-name', response.data, {path:'/'})
        }
      })
    }
...

While it's also using Axios, it is not relevant to the question. I simply want to embed cookies into all my requests once a cookie is set.

You are getting the two thinks mixed.

You have "react-cookie" and "axios"

react-cookie => is for handling the cookie on the client side

axios => is for sending ajax requests to the server

With that info, if you want the cookies from the client side to be communicated in the backend side as well, you will need to connect them together.

Note from "react-cookie" Readme:

Isomorphic cookies!

To be able to access user cookies while doing server-rendering, you can use plugToRequest or setRawCookie.

link to readme

If this is what you need, great.

If not, please comment so I could elaborate more.

for people still not able to solve it, this answer helped me. stackoverflow answer: 34558264

TLDR; one needs to set {withCredentials: true} in both GET request as well the POST request (getting the cookie) for both axios as well as fetch.

What worked for me:

Client Side:

import axios from 'axios';

const url = 'http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/v1';

export default {
  login(credentials) {
    return axios
      .post(`${url}/users/login/`, credentials, {
        withCredentials: true,
        credentials: 'include',
      })
      .then((response) => response.data);
  },
};

Server Side:

const express = require('express');
const cors = require('cors');

const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 5000;

app.use(
  cors({
    origin: [`http://localhost:${port}`, `https://localhost:${port}`],
    credentials: 'true',
  })
);

How do I make Axios send cookies in requests automatically?

set axios.defaults.withCredentials = true;

or for some specific request you can use axios.get(url,{withCredentials:true})

this will give CORS error if your 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' is set to wildcard(*). Therefore make sure to specify the url of origin of your request

for ex: if your front-end which makes the request runs on localhost:3000 , then set the response header as

res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', 'http://localhost:3000');

also set

res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials',true);

For anyone where none of these solutions are working, make sure that your request origin equals your request target, see this github issue.

I short, if you visit your website on 127.0.0.1:8000, then make sure that the requests you send are targeting your server on 127.0.0.1:8001 and not localhost:8001, although it might be the same target theoretically.

I am not familiar with Axios, but as far as I know in javascript and ajax there is an option

withCredentials: true

This will automatically send the cookie to the client-side. As an example, this scenario is also generated with passportjs, which sets a cookie on the server

TL;DR:

{ withCredentials: true } or axios.defaults.withCredentials = true

From the axios documentation

withCredentials: false, // default

withCredentials indicates whether or not cross-site Access-Control requests should be made using credentials

If you pass { withCredentials: true } with your request it should work.

A better way would be setting withCredentials as true in axios.defaults

axios.defaults.withCredentials = true

It's also important to set the necessary headers in the express response. These are those which worked for me:

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
  res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', yourExactHostname);
  res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials', true);
  res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Headers', 'Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept');
  next();
});

Another solution is to use this library:

https://github.com/3846masa/axios-cookiejar-support

which integrates "Tough Cookie" support in to Axios. Note that this approach still requires the withCredentials flag.

You can use withCredentials property to pass cookies in the request.

axios.get(`api_url`, { withCredentials: true })

By setting { withCredentials: true } you may encounter cross origin issue. To solve that you need to use

expressApp.use(cors({ credentials: true, origin: "http://localhost:8080" }));

Here you can read about withCredentials

So I had this exact same issue and lost about 6 hours of my life searching, I had the

withCredentials: true

But the browser still didn't save the cookie until for some weird reason I had the idea to shuffle the configuration setting:

Axios.post(GlobalVariables.API_URL + 'api/login', {
        email,
        password,
        honeyPot
    }, {
        withCredentials: true,
        headers: {'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': '*', 'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    }});

Seems like you should always send the 'withCredentials' Key first.