crul

Extract browser cookies and write them as a Netscape-format cookie jar file, compatible with curl -b, wget --load-cookies, and other tools that speak the Netscape cookie file format.

Uses @steipete/sweet-cookie under the hood to read cookies from Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

Install

npm install -g @kieranhunt/crul

Or run directly without installing:

npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://example.com

Usage

# Extract all cookies for a URL, print to stdout
npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://example.com

# Write to a file (created with 0600 permissions)
npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://example.com --output cookies.txt

# Use a specific browser
npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://example.com --browsers chrome

# Filter to specific cookie names
npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://example.com --names session --names csrf

# Multiple origins (useful for SSO/OAuth flows)
npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://app.example.com \
  --origins https://login.example.com \
  --origins https://accounts.example.com

# Pipe directly into curl
curl -b <(npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --url https://example.com) https://example.com/api

Real-world Examples

Fetch your list of GitHub repos:

curl -s -b <(npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --browsers firefox --url https://github.com) \
  https://github.com/repos \
  | htmlq 'script[data-target="react-app.embeddedData"]' -t \
  | jq -r '.payload.reposFinderPageRoute.repositories[].name'

# kieran.casa
# cdk-search
# aws-sdk-waiters
# ddb-ttl
# ...

Fetch the titles of all Reddit posts you've commented on:

curl -s \
  -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:148.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/148.0" \
  -b <(npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --browsers firefox --url https://www.reddit.com) \
  https://www.reddit.com/user/kieran_hunt/comments/ \
  | htmlq 'a[aria-label]' -a aria-label \
  | grep 'comment on' \
  | sed 's/.*comment on //'

# Do you know where this is?
# BoxMac Q&A Live Stream - 2-28-16
# Web developers of South Africa, what hosting site would you recommend?
# BoxMac Episode 28: Texas Box 1 - H.E.B. Macs
# ...

Fetch the title of all Hacker News posts you've upvoted:

curl \
  -b <(npx --yes @kieranhunt/crul --browsers firefox --url "https://news.ycombinator.com") \
  --silent \
  "https://news.ycombinator.com/upvoted?id=kieranhunt" \
  | htmlq '.titleline > a' --text

# Show HN: C++ AWS MSK IAM Auth Implementation – Goodbye Kafka Passwords
# Two Starkly Similar Novels and the Puzzle of Plagiarism
# Browning Fever: A story of fandom, literary societies, and impenetrable verse
# Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs seeks share of property taxes for Toronto smart city
# ...

Options

All option names mirror the GetCookiesOptions API from sweet-cookie.

| Option | Description | | ------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | --url <url> | (required) URL to extract cookies for | | --output <path> | Output file path. Omit to write to stdout | | --browsers <browsers...> | Browser backends: chrome, edge, firefox, safari | | --names <names...> | Filter to specific cookie names | | --origins <urls...> | Additional origins to include | | --profile <profile> | Alias for --chrome-profile | | --chrome-profile <profile> | Chrome profile name, directory, or Cookies DB path | | --edge-profile <profile> | Edge profile name, directory, or Cookies DB path | | --firefox-profile <profile> | Firefox profile name or directory path | | --safari-cookies-file <path> | Override path to Safari Cookies.binarycookies | | --chromium-browser <browser> | macOS Chromium target: chrome, brave, arc, chromium | | --mode <mode> | merge (default) or first | | --include-expired | Include expired cookies | | --timeout-ms <ms> | Timeout for OS helper calls (keychain/keyring/DPAPI) | | --inline-cookies-file <path> | Read inline cookie payload from file | | --inline-cookies-json <json> | Inline cookie payload as JSON string | | --inline-cookies-base64 <b64> | Inline cookie payload as base64-encoded JSON | | --debug | Print extra warnings to stderr |

Output format

The output follows the Netscape cookie file format -- one cookie per line, TAB-delimited:

# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
# https://curl.se/docs/http-cookies.html
# This file was generated by crul.
# Edit at your own risk.

#HttpOnly_.example.com	TRUE	/	TRUE	1735689600	session	abc123
example.com	FALSE	/	FALSE	0	csrf	xyz

Fields: domain, subdomain flag, path, secure, expires (unix seconds, 0 = session), name, value.

Cookies with httpOnly set get the #HttpOnly_ prefix on the domain (recognized by curl, Firefox, etc).

License

MIT