Getting all cookies from WKWebView

while getting cookies from UIWebView seems straightforward by using NSHTTPCookieStorage.sharedHTTPCookieStorage(), it seems WKWebView stores the cookies somewhere else.

I did some research, and I was able to get some cookies from the grabbing it from NSHTTPURLResponse object. this, however, does not contain all the cookies used by WKWebView:

func webView(webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyForNavigationResponse navigationResponse: WKNavigationResponse, decisionHandler: (WKNavigationResponsePolicy) -> Void) {

  if let httpResponse = navigationResponse.response as? NSHTTPURLResponse {
    if let headers = httpResponse.allHeaderFields as? [String: String], url = httpResponse.URL {
      let cookies = NSHTTPCookie.cookiesWithResponseHeaderFields(headers, forURL: url)

      for cookie in cookies {
        logDebug(cookie.description)

        logDebug("found cookie " + cookie.name + " " + cookie.value)
      }
    }
  }
}

Strangely, there's also a class WKWebsiteDataStore in ios 9 that responsible for managing cookies in WKWebView, however, the class does not contain a public method to retrieve the cookies data:

let storage = WKWebsiteDataStore.defaultDataStore()

storage.fetchDataRecordsOfTypes([WKWebsiteDataTypeCookies], completionHandler: { (records) -> Void in
  for record in records {
    logDebug("cookie record is " + record.debugDescription)

    for dataType in record.dataTypes {
      logDebug("data type is " + dataType.debugDescription)

      // get cookie data??
    }
  }
})

Is there a workaround for getting the cookie data?

Cookies used (created) by the WKWebView are actually correctly stored in the NSHTTPCookieStorage.sharedHTTPCookieStorage().

The problem is that the WKWebView does not write back the cookies immediately. I think it does this on its own schedule. For example when a WKWebView is closed or maybe periodically.

So eventually they do end up in there, but when is unpredictable.

You may be able to force a 'sync' to the shared NSHTTPCookieStorage by closing your WKWebView. Please let us know if this works.

Update: I just remembered that in Firefox for iOS we force the WKWebView to flush its internal data, including cookies, by replacing its WKProcessPool with a new one. There is no official API, but I am pretty sure that is the most reliable workaround right now.

Finally, httpCookieStore for WKWebsiteDataStore landed in iOS 11.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebsitedatastore?changes=latest_minor