How To Handle Cookies in Selenium WebDriver

Introduction to Cookies

Cookies are usually used to recognize the identity of a user on a website. In simple terms, a cookie is a portion of data that has been sent from a web application and stored in a browser. Whenever a user browses a website, the information about the user and their favorites is stored as a cookie in the form of key-value pairs.

When the user visits the website again, the information which was stored would be used for identification.

Below is an example of the TestMu AI website that uses cookies for recognizing the user. In the below screenshot, you can see a small popup that shows the usage of cookies.

• Name – This field contains the cookie’s name.
• Value – This field contains the cookie’s value.
• Domain – This field contains the hosts that are allowed to receive the cookie.
• Path – This field contains the URL required in the requested URL to send the Cookie header.
• Expires / Max-Age – This field contains the expiration date or the maximum age of the cookie.
• Size – This field contains the size of the cookie.
• HttpOnly – This field indicates whether the cookie has to be used only over HTTP or not.
• Secure – This field indicates that the cookie can only be sent to the server over a secure HTTPS connection (set as true).
• SameSite – This field contains the values (strict or lax) if the cookie is using the experimental SameSite attribute.
• Priority – This field Contains low, medium (default), or high values if the depreciated cookie Priority attribute is enabled.

Here are the major functions of website cookies:

• Tracking the browsing activity of the user
• Remembering the login details of the user
• Tracking the visitor count in a website further helps the website owners identify their unique visitors every day.

How to use Selenium Cookies API on Cloud Selenium Grid

Rather than running Selenium tests on a local Selenium Grid, it is recommended to execute the same on a cloud-based Selenium Grid like TestMu AI. There are numerous benefits of website testing on cloud since it helps achieve much-needed scalability, reliability, and performance.

TestMu AI provides an online cloud platform to run all your Selenium tests with ease. In addition, it is easy to port the code that uses the local Selenium Grid to TestMu AI’s cloud-based Selenium Grid. Thus, you can make the most out of parallel testing in Selenium by moving the Selenium test automation to a cloud-based Grid.

Once you have created an account on TestMu AI, note the username & access key available in the profile section of TestMu AI. The combination of username & access key is used for accessing the Remote Selenium Grid of TestMu AI. The capabilities are generated using the TestMu AI capabilities generator.

Shown below is the demonstration of Selenium cookies API with the execution being performed on the TestMu AI Selenium Grid:

package Pages;
 
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
 
import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.Cookie;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver;
import org.testng.Assert;
import org.testng.annotations.AfterTest;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest;
import org.testng.annotations.Parameters;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;
public class HandleCookies
{
    String username = "Your_username"; //Enter your username 
    String accesskey = "Your_accessKey"; //Enter your accesskey
        
    static RemoteWebDriver driver = null;
    String gridURL = "@hub.lambdatest.com/wd/hub";
    String URL = "https://www.lambdatest.com/";
 
   
    @BeforeTest
    @Parameters("browser")
    public void setUp(String browser)throws MalformedURLException  
    {           
        if(browser.equalsIgnoreCase("chrome"))
        {
            DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
            capabilities.setCapability("browserName", "chrome");    //To specify the browser
            capabilities.setCapability("version", "70.0");      //To specify the browser version
            capabilities.setCapability("platform", "win10");        // To specify the OS
            capabilities.setCapability("build", "HandlingCookie");               //To identify the test 
            capabilities.setCapability("name", "CookieTest");
            capabilities.setCapability("network", true);        // To enable network logs
            capabilities.setCapability("visual", true);             // To enable step by step screenshot
            capabilities.setCapability("video", true);          // To enable video recording
            capabilities.setCapability("console", true);            // To capture console logs
            try {
                driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("https://" + username + ":" + accesskey + gridURL), capabilities);
            } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
                System.out.println("Invalid grid URL");
            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.out.println(e.getMessage());
            }
        }
        else if(browser.equalsIgnoreCase("Firefox"))
        {
            DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
            capabilities.setCapability("browserName", "Firefox");   //To specify the browser
            capabilities.setCapability("version", "76.0");      //To specify the browser version
            capabilities.setCapability("platform", "win10");        // To specify the OS
            capabilities.setCapability("build", " HandlingCookie"); //To identify the test
            capabilities.setCapability("name", " CookieTest");
            capabilities.setCapability("network", true);        // To enable network logs
            capabilities.setCapability("visual", true);             // To enable step by step screenshot
            capabilities.setCapability("video", true);                        // To enable video recording
            capabilities.setCapability("console", true);            // To capture console logs
            try {
                driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("https://" + username + ":" + accesskey + gridURL), capabilities);
            } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
                System.out.println("Invalid grid URL");
            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.out.println(e.getMessage());
            }
        }
    }
 
    @Test
    public void getCookieInformation()
    {
        System.out.println("=====Getting cookie information Test started======");
        driver.get(URL);
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
        Set<Cookie> cookiesList =  driver.manage().getCookies();
        for(Cookie getcookies :cookiesList)
        {
            System.out.println(getcookies);
        }
        System.out.println("=====Getting cookie information Test has ended======");         
        
    }
    
    @Test
    public void addCookie() {
        boolean status = false;
 
        System.out.println("=====Adding a cookie Test started======");
        driver.get(URL);
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
        Cookie cname = new Cookie("myCookie", "12345678999");
        driver.manage().addCookie(cname);
 
        //retrieve the cookies to view the newly added cookie
        Set<Cookie> cookiesList =  driver.manage().getCookies();
        for(Cookie getcookies :cookiesList) {
            System.out.println(getcookies);
            if(getcookies.getName().equals("myCookie")) {
                status = true;
                System.out.println("The cookie has been added");
            }
            else
                Assert.assertFalse(false, "The cookie hasnt been added");
        }
        System.out.println("=====Adding a new cookie Test has ended======");            
    }
    
    @Test
    public void deleteSpecificCookie()
    {
        System.out.println("=====Deleting a specific cookie Test started======");
        driver.get(URL);
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
        
        Cookie cname = new Cookie("myCookie1", "abcdefj");
        driver.manage().addCookie(cname);
 
        driver.manage().deleteCookie(cname);
        Set<Cookie> cookiesListNew =  driver.manage().getCookies();
        for(Cookie getcookies :cookiesListNew)
        {
            System.out.println(getcookies );
        }
        System.out.println("=====Deleting a specific cookie Test has ended======");         
    }
    
    @Test
    public void deleteAllCookies()
    {
        System.out.println("=====Deleting all cookies Test started======");
        driver.get(URL);
        driver.manage().window().maximize();
        driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
        driver.manage().deleteAllCookies();
        Set<Cookie> cookiesListNew =  driver.manage().getCookies();
        cookiesListNew.size();
        System.out.println("The size is "+cookiesListNew);
        System.out.println("=====Deleting all cookies Test has ended======");           
        
    }
    @AfterTest
    public void tearDown()
    {
        driver.quit();
    }
}

As seen above, there are no logic changes, and most of the implementation remains unchanged. However, instead of the local Selenium WebDriver, the Remote WebDriver is used for accessing the cloud-based Selenium Grid.

Since we have four tests in the test suite, we leverage parallel testing in TestNG Selenium to realize parallelism at the Thread level. Shown below is the testng.xml file that runs tests under the @Test annotation in parallel. In addition, you can check out more TestNG Learning Hub on TestMu AI to gain insights into the TestNG framework.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE suite SYSTEM "http://testng.org/testng-1.0.dtd">
<suite name="TestSuite" parallel="tests">
<test name="ChromeBrowserTest">
<parameter name="browser" value="chrome"/>
<classes>
<class name="Pages.HandleCookies">
</class>
</classes>
</test>
</suite>

Below is the test execution status of our tests in Eclipse:

To run this test in the TestMu AI platform, right-click on the testng.xml that you have created in the IDE. Click Run As –> TestNG Suite. With this, the test would be triggered on the TestMu AI platform.

Shown below is the console output, which indicates that the test execution was successful:

Hop on to the Automation Dashboard on TestMu AI for checking the status of the test execution:

With this we have demonstrated the major Selenium cookies APIs that can be used for performing operations on the cookies.

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It’s a Wrap

To summarize, we deep-dived into the various aspects of cookies primarily used for website owners to track the user’s visits or activity. Selenium provides methods (or APIs) using which you can perform various actions on the cookies. We demonstrated how to get cookies in Selenium, how to delete all the cookies in Selenium, how to delete a certain cookie, and more.

Rather than performing Selenium automation testing on a local Selenium Grid, it is recommended to expedite the test execution using a cloud-based Selenium grid like TestMu AI. It lets you run Selenium tests at scale on 3000+ browsers and operating systems.

I hope you find this article very useful and informative. I would love to hear how you use Selenium cookies API for large-scale websites (or web apps). Please feel free to share this blog with your friends and colleagues.

Happy Testing…!