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 can use withCredentials property.

XMLHttpRequest from a different domain cannot set cookie values for their own domain unless withCredentials is set to true before making the request.

axios.get(BASE_URL + '/todos', { withCredentials: true });

Also its possible to force credentials to every Axios requests

axios.defaults.withCredentials = true

Or using credentials for some of the Axios requests as the following code

const instance = axios.create({
   withCredentials: true,
   baseURL: BASE_URL
})
instance.get('/todos')

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();
});

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

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.

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

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);
  },
};

Note: Credentials will be the body of the post request, in this case the user login information (Normally obtained from the login form):

{
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "password": "userpassword"
}

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',
  })
);

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.

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.

> 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);

Fatih's answer is still valid and great in 2021.

Also axios.defaults.withCredentials = true will do the trick.

It seems passing { withCredentials: true } to individual axios calls is deprecated.

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.

This worked for me:

• First, I had to make a new instance of axios with a custom config
• Then, I used that axios instance to make a post request

See code below:

 const ax = axios.create({
  baseURL: 'yourbaseUrl',
  withCredentials: true,
});

const loginUser = () => { const body ={username:state.values.email, password:state.values.password};
ax.post('/login',body).then(function(response){
return response}).then().catch(error => console.log(error));}

source: https://www.npmjs.com/package/axios#creating-an-instance

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.