Does Axios support Set-Cookie? Is it possible to authenticate through Axios HTTP request? - express

Question

I'm trying to authenticate express API back-end using Axios HTTP request call.
I was able to see 'Set-Cookie' in the response header, but cookie was not set. Is it possible to set cookies through Axios HTTP calls?
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 355
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2018 05:59:01 GMT
ETag: W/"163-PAMc87SVHWkdimTJca7oRw"
Set-Cookie: token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...; Max-Age=3.6; Path=/; Expires=Fri, 28 Sep 2018 05:59:04 GMT; HttpOnly
X-Powered-By: Express

Answer 1

Try this out!
axios.get('your_url', {withCredentials: true}); //for GET
axios.post('your_url', data, {withCredentials: true}); //for POST
axios.put('your_url', data, {withCredentials: true}); //for PUT
axios.delete('your_url', data, {withCredentials: true}); //for DELETE
For more information on this from the axios docs:
"withCredentials indicates whether or not cross-site Access-Control requests should be made using credentials" - https://github.com/axios/axios
More detail on withCredentials:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequest/withCredentials

Answer 2

Yes you can set cookies by Axios. The cookies need to be passed into the headers object. You can send cookies in a get/post/put/delete/etc. request:
As suggested by Aaron:
axios.get('URL', {
withCredentials: true
});
axios.post('URL', data, {
withCredentials: true
});
axios.put('URL', data, {
withCredentials: true
});
axios.delete('URL', data, {
withCredentials: true
});
Or you may also try this:
axios.get(url, {
headers: {
Cookie: "cookie1=value; cookie2=value; cookie3=value;"
}
}).then(response => {
console.log(response);
});

Answer 3

In case anyone else faces the problem I've had,
Here's a repost of my answer on a similar question https://stackoverflow.com/a/62821342/8479303
In my case, the network panel showed that the response had the 'Set-Cookie' header, but in axios the header wouldn't show up, and the cookie was being set.
For me, the resolution was setting the Access-Control-Expose-Headers header.
For explanation, from this comment on an issue in the axios repository I was directed to this person's notes which led me to set the Access-Control-Expose-Headers header -- and now the cookie is properly setting in the client.
So, in Express.js, I had to add the exposedHeaders option to my cors middleware:
const corsOptions = {
//To allow requests from client
origin: [
"http://localhost:3001",
"http://127.0.0.1",
"http://104.142.122.231",
],
credentials: true,
exposedHeaders: ["set-cookie"],
};
...
app.use("/", cors(corsOptions), router);
It was also important that on the axios side I use the withCredentials config in following axios requests that I wanted to include the cookies.
ex/
const { data } = await api.get("/workouts", { withCredentials: true });

Answer 4

I tried setting withCredentials: true but was still getting this error:
Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at http://localhost:4000/users/register. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed).
CORS was configured to allow requests from the frontend port.
I had to change the default options for axios like so:
axios.defaults.withCredentials = true
And the issue was solved. No error and Set-Cookie working as expected.

Answer 5

cookie can't be touched, the thing is it gets bundled to request object after appended to the response object.
function sign(req,res){
res.cookie("x-token", signed, { maxAge: (new JWTService().jwtExpirySeconds *
1000) });
}
client after receiving this response just have to continue with requests, set-cookie in the name of "Cookie " will be bundled to those request, like this
caveat: when http cookie expires its is automatically removed and not bundled to request there after.