How to convert raw cookie into Netscape jar cookie and save to file? - youtube-dl

Question

I want to pass a cookie file to youtube-dl coming from a browser extension. The extension sends cookie in raw format i.e. like VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=_SebbjYciU0; YSC=tSqadPjjfd8; PREF=f4=4000000
But youtube-dl takes netscape jar format cookies (as far as I know).
If I put the raw text cookie in a file and pass it to --cookies=file.txt argument youtube-dl raises an exception.
I cannot manage to to convert my raw cookies to jar cookies and save to a file in the disk. I have searched for a solution but did not find any acceptable solution.

Answer 1

I had very similar problem to convert "curl" cookies into wget one ...
Netscape CookieJar format is straight forward see *
so I took few minutes to write a quick perl script and generate a cookiejar
here is the code (downloadable here)
#!/usr/bin/perl
# usage
# perl cookiejar.pl {{url}} '{{cookie-string}}'
use YAML::Syck qw(Dump);
my $expires = $^T + 86400;
my $path = '/';
my $url = shift;
my $cookies = shift;
printf "--- # %s at %u\n",__FILE__,$^T;
my $domain;
my $p = index($url,'://')+3;
my $l = index($url,'/',$p);
$domain = substr($url,$p,$l-$p);
my $dots = () = $domain =~ /\./g;
printf "dots: %s\n",$dots;
if ($dots > 1) {
$domain = substr($domain,index($domain,'.'));
} else {
$domain = '.'.$domain;
}
printf "domain: %s\n",$domain;
printf "url: %s\n",$url;
local *F; open F,'>','cookiejar.txt' or warn $!;
print F <<EOT;
# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
# http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/cookie_spec.html
# This is a generated file! Do not edit.
# domain: $domain
# url: $url
EOT
my #cookies = split'; ',$cookies;
printf "--- %s...\n",Dump(\#cookies);
foreach my $cookie (#cookies) {
my ($key,$value) = split('=',$cookie);
if (! $seen{$key}++) {
# domain access path sec expire cookie value
printf F "%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%s\n",$domain,'TRUE',$path,'FALSE',$expires,$key,$value;
}
}
close F;
print "info: cookiejar.txt created\n";
printf "cmd: wget --load-cookie-file cookiejar.txt --referer=%s -p %s\n",$domain,$url;
printf "cmd: youtube-dl --cookie cookiejar.txt -referer %s %s\n",$domain,$url;
exit $?;
1; # $Source: /my/perl/scripts/cookiejar.pl $
you run it as followed :
perl cookiejar.pl https://example.com/ 'cookie1=value1; cookie2=value2'
note:
You might need to install YAML::Syck with
cpan install YAML::Syck
or just comment out the Dump() call and the use YAML::Syck line.