Node.js Post Request - Keep Session Alive

Question

Hi guys (Happy new year btw :) )! I'm giving a try to Node.js and Express.js, and, i'm facing some difficulties with the processing of several requests.

Here's the problem : I need to retrieve data from an external website. To do so, I have to be logged in and I have a fake/zombie account available. What I am trying to do is to first send a POST request with my username and password, and then, sending a GET request to access a specific content. The problem is that, even if the POST request is successfully executed, when I'm doing the GET request, I am no longer logged in. I was doing the same thing with the Gem Mechanize in Ruby but, it should probably do some implicit stuff that made the whole process work.

To make requests, I am using the request module (https://github.com/request/request). And, here is the code :

var zombie = require('request').defaults({
  headers: { connection: "keep-alive" },
  pool: {maxSockets: 1},
});

var connect = function(req, res, next){
  zombie.post({
    url: "target.com",
    form: {
      user: "zombie",
      pass: "password"}
  }, function(err, response, body){
    req.connected = true;
    next();
  });
}

var information = function(req, res, next){
  if(req.connected){
    zombie.get({
      url:  "target.com",
      qs: {
        page: "targetPage",
        search: req.params.search}
    }, function(err, response, body){
      res.send(body);
    })
  }
}

And, from a controller, I'm trying to connect, then to access information.

var router = require('express').Router();
var zombie = require('./../middleware/Zombie');
router.get('/search/:search', zombie.connect, zombie.information);

Answer 1

Most likely the server is sending back a Set-Cookie and it's getting ignored (the default behavior for the request module). To fix that, you need to npm install tough-cookie and then set up the jar config option. There are some examples that show various cookie jar usage scenarios.