Help with cookies/authentication

trihaitran

Hi I am trying to pull some data from a Web site: http://schoolfinder.com

The issue is that I want to use the advanced search feature which requires logging into the Web site. I have a username and password, however I want to connect programmatically from Python. I have done data capture from the Web before so the only new thing here to me is the authentication stuff. I need cookies as this page describes: http://schoolfinder.com/login/login.asp

I already know how to enter POST/GET data to a request, but how do I deal with cookies/authentication? I have read a few articles without success:

urllib2:
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/a...lib2.shtml#id6

urllib2 Cookbook:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~kent37/kk/00010.html

basic authentication:
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/a...ion.shtml#id19

cookielib:
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/a...ookielib.shtml

Is there some other resource I am missing? Is it possible that someone could setup a basic script that would allow me to connect to schoolfinder.com with my username and password? My username is "greenman", password is "greenman". All I need to know is how to access pages as if I logged in by Web browser.

Thank you very much.

Formula

Try this code will give you all cookies will be registered in a file
from the schoolfinder.com

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#!/usr/local/bin/python
 
COOKIEFILE = 'cookies.lwp'          # the path and filename that you want to use to save your cookies in
 
import os.path
 
import sys
 
cj = None
 
ClientCookie = None
 
cookielib = None
 
try:                                    # Let's see if cookielib is available
 
    import cookielib            
 
except ImportError:
 
    pass
 
else:
 
    import urllib2    
 
    urlopen = urllib2.urlopen
 
    cj = cookielib.LWPCookieJar()       # This is a subclass of FileCookieJar that has useful load and save methods
 
    Request = urllib2.Request
 
if not cookielib:                   # If importing cookielib fails let's try ClientCookie
 
    try:                                            
 
        import ClientCookie 
 
    except ImportError:
 
        import urllib2
 
        urlopen = urllib2.urlopen
 
        Request = urllib2.Request
 
    else:
 
        urlopen = ClientCookie.urlopen
 
        cj = ClientCookie.LWPCookieJar()
 
        Request = ClientCookie.Request
 
####################################################
 
# We've now imported the relevant library - whichever library is being used urlopen is bound to the right function for retrieving URLs
 
# Request is bound to the right function for creating Request objects
 
# Let's load the cookies, if they exist. 
 
if cj != None:                                  # now we have to install our CookieJar so that it is used as the default CookieProcessor in the default opener handler
 
    if os.path.isfile(COOKIEFILE):
 
        cj.load(COOKIEFILE)
 
    if cookielib:
 
        opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))
 
        urllib2.install_opener(opener)
 
    else:
 
        opener = ClientCookie.build_opener(ClientCookie.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))
 
        ClientCookie.install_opener(opener)
 
# If one of the cookie libraries is available, any call to urlopen will handle cookies using the CookieJar instance we've created
 
# (Note that if we are using ClientCookie we haven't explicitly imported urllib2)
 
# as an example :
 
theurl = 'http://schoolfinder.com/login/login.asp'         # an example url that sets a cookie, try different urls here and see the cookie collection you can make !

body={'usr':'greenman','pwd':'greenman'}
 
from urllib import urlencode
 
txdata = urlencode(body)                                                                           # if we were making a POST type request, we could encode a dictionary of values here - using urllib.urlencode
 
txheaders =  {'User-agent' : 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)'}          # fake a user agent, some websites (like google) don't like automated exploration
 
try:
 
    req = Request(theurl, txdata, txheaders)            # create a request object
 
    handle = urlopen(req)                               # and open it to return a handle on the url
 
except IOError, e:
 
    print 'We failed to open "%s".' % theurl
 
    if hasattr(e, 'code'):
 
        print 'We failed with error code - %s.' % e.code
 
    elif hasattr(e, 'reason'):
 
        print "The error object has the following 'reason' attribute :", e.reason
 
        print "This usually means the server doesn't exist, is down, or we don't have an internet connection."
 
        sys.exit()
 
else:
 
    print 'Here are the headers of the page :'
 
    print handle.info()                             # handle.read() returns the page, handle.geturl() returns the true url of the page fetched (in case urlopen has followed any redirects, which it sometimes does)
 
print
 
if cj == None:
 
    print "We don't have a cookie library available - sorry."
 
    print "I can't show you any cookies."
 
else:
 
    print 'These are the cookies we have received so far :'
 
    for index, cookie in enumerate(cj):
 
        print index, '  :  ', cookie        
 
    cj.save(COOKIEFILE)                     # save the cookies again

trihaitran

Thanks for the help. Your code by itself did not work, but it pushed me in the right direction. Here is what worked for me and let me see the protected pages:

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 #!/usr/bin/env python

# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
 
import cookielib

import urllib

import urllib2
 
cj = cookielib.CookieJar()

opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))

resp = opener.open('http://schoolfinder.com') # save a cookie
 
theurl = 'http://schoolfinder.com/login/login.asp' # an example url that sets a cookie, try different urls here and see the cookie collection you can make !

body={'usr':'greenman','pwd':'greenman'}

txdata = urllib.urlencode(body) # if we were making a POST type request, we could encode a dictionary of values here - using urllib.urlencode

txheaders =  {'User-agent' : 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)'} # fake a user agent, some websites (like google) don't like automated exploration
 
try:

    req = urllib2.Request(theurl, txdata, txheaders) # create a request object

    handle = opener.open(req) # and open it to return a handle on the url

    HTMLSource = handle.read()

    f = file('test.html', 'w')

    f.write(HTMLSource)

    f.close()
 
except IOError, e:

    print 'We failed to open "%s".' % theurl

    if hasattr(e, 'code'):

        print 'We failed with error code - %s.' % e.code

    elif hasattr(e, 'reason'):

        print "The error object has the following 'reason' attribute :", e.reason

        print "This usually means the server doesn't exist, is down, or we don't have an internet connection."

        sys.exit()
 
else:

    print 'Here are the headers of the page :'

    print handle.info() # handle.read() returns the page, handle.geturl() returns the true url of the page fetched (in case urlopen has followed any redirects, which it sometimes does)

johnpollard

Your script works for me, but the one below for another site does not. The test.html file is not my logged in file like it is when I run your script.

The only lines of code I changed are;
resp = opener.open('http://www.amm.com/')
theurl = 'http://www.amm.com/login.asp'
body={'username':'AMMT54590570','password':'AMMT32 564288'}

What am I doing wrong?

-----------------------------------

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 #!/usr/bin/env python

# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
 
import cookielib

import urllib

import urllib2
 
cj = cookielib.CookieJar()

opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cj))

resp = opener.open('http://www.amm.com/login.asp') # save a cookie
 
theurl = 'http://www.amm.com/login.asp'

# an example url that sets a cookie, try different urls here and see the cookie collection you can make !

body={'username':'AMMT54590570','password':'AMMT32564288'}

txdata = urllib.urlencode(body)

# if we were making a POST type request, we could encode a dictionary of values here - using urllib.urlencode

txheaders =  {'User-agent' : 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT)'}

# fake a user agent, some websites (like google) don't like automated exploration
 
try:

    req = urllib2.Request(theurl, txdata, txheaders) # create a request object

    handle = opener.open(req) # and open it to return a handle on the url

    HTMLSource = handle.read()

    f = file('test.html', 'w')

    f.write(HTMLSource)

    f.close()
 
except IOError, e:

    print 'We failed to open "%s".' % theurl

    if hasattr(e, 'code'):

        print 'We failed with error code - %s.' % e.code

    elif hasattr(e, 'reason'):

        print "The error object has the following 'reason' attribute :", e.reason

        print "This usually means the server doesn't exist, is down, or we don't have an internet connection."

        sys.exit()
 
else:

    print 'Here are the headers of the page :'

    print handle.info() # handle.read() returns the page, handle.geturl() returns the true url of the page fetched (in case urlopen has followed any redirects, which it sometimes does)

Help with cookies/authentication

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