Client-side cookies on Python in Mac OSX

[Adrian Petrescu]

Hi, all. I'm writing an app for OS X; therefore I'd prefer to use only
the default python install that comes with Tiger. For the moment,
however, this means:

NaviOSX:~ adrianpetrescu$ python -V
Python 2.3.5

Therefore, I was not surprised to find out that cookielib did not
exist here, since I knew that it was a 2.4+ feature.

However, I *was* shocked to find out that ClientCookie, which I'd
thought was a Python 2.0+ feature, also cannot be found:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named ClientCookie

Why would Apple go out of their way to remove this functionality from
their shipped version of Python? More importantly, considering I need
to programatically access a website that uses cookies for
authentication, how can I do this in OSX's Python install? Do they
provide some other library they'd prefer you to use?

I'm sure SOMEONE in the world has used cookies on Macs so I'm hoping
there is a solution for this...

Thanks in advance!
-- Adrian Petrescu

 

[Graham Dumpleton]

Hi, all. I'm writing an app for OS X; therefore I'd prefer to use only
the default python install that comes with Tiger. For the moment,
however, this means:

NaviOSX:~ adrianpetrescu$ python -V
Python 2.3.5

Therefore, I was not surprised to find out that cookielib did not
exist here, since I knew that it was a 2.4+ feature.

However, I *was* shocked to find out that ClientCookie, which I'd
thought was a Python 2.0+ feature, also cannot be found:


Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named ClientCookie

Why would Apple go out of their way to remove this functionality from
their shipped version of Python? More importantly, considering I need
to programatically access a website that uses cookies for
authentication, how can I do this in OSX's Python install? Do they
provide some other library they'd prefer you to use?

I'm sure SOMEONE in the world has used cookies on Macs so I'm hoping
there is a solution for this...

They didn't remove it, it was never there in the first place.

The ClientCookie site says 'Python 2.0 or above is required'. It
doesn't say it is included with Python distributions. The package
still has to be installed separately. See:

http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/ClientCookie/

Graham

 

[Adrian Petrescu]

Oh, you're right! Silly me, I had always thought it was standard.
Thanks for pointing this out! I went and downloaded ClientCookie and
it works great on OS X. And since it is BSD-licensed, I can use it in
my app without any fear. Perfect.

Thank you, Graham!

 

[John J. Lee]

Oh, you're right! Silly me, I had always thought it was standard.
Thanks for pointing this out! I went and downloaded ClientCookie and
it works great on OS X. And since it is BSD-licensed, I can use it in
my app without any fear. Perfect.

Thank you, Graham!

The relationship is that cookielib is derived from ClientCookie:
essentially the same code, cleaned up to take advantage of newer
Python features, renamed to 'cookielib' and added to the stdlib.


The other difference is in thread synchronisation: ClientCookie had
some broken thread synchronisation at one point, which was
subsequently removed (which doesn't imply ClientCookie is not useful
in threaded code). Though an unfortunate series of events the
released cookielib ended up with that broken thread synchronisation
code. It seems at least some of those thread synchronisation bugs in
cookielib are fixed in the lastest version of Python.

http://python.org/sf/1484758

http://python.org/sf/1587139



John