Express doesn't set a cookie

Question

I have problem with setting a cookies via express. I'm using Este.js dev stack and I try to set a cookie in API auth /login route. Here is the code that I use in /api/v1/auth/login route

res.cookie('token', jwt.token, {expires: new Date(Date.now() + 9999999)});
res.status(200).send({user, token: jwt.token});

In src/server/main.js I have registered cookie-parser as first middleware

app.use(cookieParser());

The response header for /api/v1/auth/login route contains

Set-Cookie:token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiJ9.eyJ.. 

but the cookie isn't saved in browser (document.cookie is empty, also Resources - Cookies tab in develepoers tools is empty) :(

EDIT: I'm found that when I call this in /api/v1/auth/login (without call res.send or res.json)

res.cookie('token', jwt.token, {expires: new Date(Date.now() + 9999999), httpOnly: false}); next();

then the cookie is set AND response header has set X-Powered-By:Este.js ... this sets esteMiddleware in expres frontend rendering part.

When I use res.send

res.cookie('token', jwt.token, {expires: new Date(Date.now() + 9999999), httpOnly: false}).send({user, token: jwt.token});`
next();

then I get error Can't set headers after they are sent. because send method is used, so frontend render throw this error.

But I have to send a data from API, so how I can deal with this?

Can some help me please? Thanks!

Answer 1

I had the same issue. The server response comes with cookie set:

Set-Cookie:my_cookie=HelloWorld; Path=/; Expires=Wed, 15 Mar 2017 15:59:59 GMT 

But the cookie was not saved by a browser.

This is how I solved it.

I use fetch in a client-side code. If you do not specify credentials: 'include' in fetch options, cookies are neither sent to server nor saved by a browser, although the server response sets cookies.

Example:

var headers = new Headers();
headers.append('Content-Type', 'application/json');
headers.append('Accept', 'application/json');

return fetch('/your/server_endpoint', {
    method: 'POST',
    mode: 'same-origin',
    redirect: 'follow',
    credentials: 'include', // Don't forget to specify this if you need cookies
    headers: headers,
    body: JSON.stringify({
        first_name: 'John',
        last_name: 'Doe'
    })
})

Hope it helps somebody.

Answer 2

Struggling with this for a 3h, and finally realized, with axios, I should set withCredentials to true, even though I am only receiving cookies.

axios.defaults.withCredentials = true;

Answer 3

i work with express 4 and node 7.4 and angular,I had the same problem me help this:
a) server side: in file app.js i give headers to all response like:

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

this must have before all router.
I saw a lot of added this headers:

res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers","*");
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials', true);
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'GET,PUT,POST,DELETE');

but i dont need that,

b) when you definer cookie you nee add httpOnly: false, like:

 res.cookie( key, value,{ maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 10, httpOnly: false });

c) client side: in send ajax you need add: "withCredentials: true," like:

$http({
     method: 'POST',
     url: 'url, 
     withCredentials: true,
     data : {}
   }).then(function(response){
        // code  
   }, function (response) {
         // code 
   });

good luck.

Answer 4

There's a few issues:

• a cookie that isn't explicitly set with httpOnly : false will not be accessible through document.cookie in the browser. It will still be sent with HTTP requests, and if you check your browsers' dev tools you will most likely find the cookie there (in Chrome they can be found in the Resources tab of the dev tools);
• the next() that you're calling should only be used if you want to defer sending back a response to some other part of your application, which—judging by your code—is not what you want.

So, it seems to me that this should solve your problems:

res.cookie('token', jwt.token, {
  expires  : new Date(Date.now() + 9999999),
  httpOnly : false
});
res.status(200).send({ user, token: jwt.token });

As a side note: there's a reason for httpOnly defaulting to true (to prevent malicious XSS scripts from accessing session cookies and the like). If you don't have a very good reason to be able to access the cookie through client-side JS, don't set it to false.

Answer 5

Double check the size of your cookie.

For me, the way I was generating an auth token to store in my cookie, was causing the size of the cookie to increase with subsequent login attempts, eventually causing the browser to not set the cookie because it's too big.

Browser cookie size cheat sheet

Answer 6

There is no problem to set "httpOnly" to true in a cookie.

I am using "request-promise" for requests and the client is a "React" app, but the technology doesn't matter. The request is:

    var options = {
        uri: 'http://localhost:4000/some-route',
        method: 'POST',
        withCredentials: true
    }

    request(options)
        .then(function (response) {
            console.log(response)
        })
        .catch(function (err) {
            console.log(err)
        });

The response on the node.js (express) server is:

   var token=JSON.stringify({
  "token":"some token content"
});
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', "http://127.0.0.1:3000");
res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept");
res.header( 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials',true);
var date = new Date();
var tokenExpire = date.setTime(date.getTime() + (360 * 1000));
res.status(201)
   .cookie('token', token, { maxAge: tokenExpire, httpOnly: true })
   .send();

The client make a request, the server set the cookie , the browser (client) receive it (you can see it in "Application tab on the dev tools") and then I again launch a request to the server and the cookie is located in the request: "req.headers.cookie" so accessible by the server for verifying.

Answer 7

I had the same issue with cross origin requests, here is how I fixed it. You need to specifically tell browser to allow credentials. With axios, you can specify it to allow credentials on every request like axios.defaults.withCredentials = true however this will be blocked by CORS policy and you need to specify credentials is true on your api like

const corsOptions = {
    credentials: true,
    ///..other options
  };

app.use(cors(corsOptions));

Update: this only work on localhost For detail answer on issues in production environment, see my answer here

Answer 8

A cookie can't be set if the client and server are on different domains. Different sub-domains is doable but not different domains and not different ports.

If using Angular as your frontend you can simply send all requests to the same domain as your Angular app (so the app is sending all API requests to itself) and stick an /api/ in every HTTP API request URL - usually configured in your environment.ts file:

export const environment = {
  production: false,
  httpPhp: 'http://localhost:4200/api'
}

Then all HTTP requests will use environment.httpPhp + '/rest/of/path'

Then you can proxy those requests by creating proxy.conf.json as follows:

{
  "/api/*": {
    "target": "http://localhost:5200",
    "secure": false,
    "changeOrigin": true,
    "pathRewrite": {
      "^/api": ""
    }
  }
}

Then add this to ng serve:

ng serve -o --proxy-config proxy.conf.json

Then restart your app and it should all work, assuming that your server is actually using Set-Cookie in the HTTP response headers. (Note, on a diff domain you won't even see the Set-Cookie response header, even if the server is configured correctly).

Answer 9

app.post('/api/user/login',(req,res)=>{

    User.findOne({'email':req.body.email},(err,user)=>{
        if(!user) res.json({message: 'Auth failed, user not found'})
        
        user.comparePassword(req.body.password,(err,isMatch)=>{
            if(err) throw err;
            if(!isMatch) return res.status(400).json({
                message:'Wrong password'
            });
            user.generateToken((err,user)=>{
                if(err) return res.status(400).send(err);
                res.cookie('auth',user.token).send('ok')
            })
        }) 
    })
});

response

res.cookie('auth',user.token).send('ok')

server gives response ok but the cookie is not stored in the browser

Solution :

Add Postman Interceptor Extension to chrome which allows postman to store cookie in browser and get back useing requests.

Answer 10

One of the main features is to set header correctly.

For nginx:

add-header Access-Control-Allow-Origin' 'domain.com';

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';

Add this to your web server.

Then form cookie like this:

"cookie": {
        "secure": true, 
        "path": "/", 
        "httpOnly": true, 
        "hostOnly": true, 
        "sameSite": false, 
        "domain" : "domain.com"
    }

The best approach to get cookie from express is to use cookie-parser.