PSA user-data-dir structure is changing

[dvallet (Chromium)]

Headless user profile structure is changing. If you reuse profiles by setting the --user-data-dir flag, your profile (Cookies and local storage) will no longer be read in Chrome 63.

Why are we making this change?

We are changing headless to use a "Default" profile, this means that we share the same structure as non-headless Chrome Default profile, so you can reuse/share more easily profiles between Chrome and Headless Chrome. See https://crbug.com/775703 and https://crbug.com/617931 for more information.

Can I reuse the profile from previous versions of Headless Chrome?

Yes, you just need to move all folders into a Default directory. So if you stored your profile in <profile> you would run the following bash commands:

cd <profile>

mkdir Default

mv * Default

Please report any issues at crbug.com/new

[PhistucK]

I wonder how reusing is possible so simply - I know some of the files contain absolute paths - did you fix those instances, or are they simply irrelevant (used only by plugins, extensions and other unsupported features in --headless)?

☆PhistucK

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "headless-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to headless-dev+unsubscribe@chromium.org.
To post to this group, send email to headle...@chromium.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/CAPuKmMWeWRd-J7sq3iMzX_Zj0YpoBUvMBAYascEcPN80Cmb1rQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[dvallet (Chromium)]

For now we only support limited local storage features, mainly Cookies. Those should work just by moving the files.

On Fri, 3 Nov 2017 at 21:53 PhistucK <phis...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wonder how reusing is possible so simply - I know some of the files contain absolute paths - did you fix those instances, or are they simply irrelevant (used only by plugins, extensions and other unsupported features in --headless)?

☆PhistucK

On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 12:44 AM, dvallet (Chromium) <dva...@chromium.org> wrote:

Headless user profile structure is changing. If you reuse profiles by setting the --user-data-dir flag, your profile (Cookies and local storage) will no longer be read in Chrome 63.

Why are we making this change?

We are changing headless to use a "Default" profile, this means that we share the same structure as non-headless Chrome Default profile, so you can reuse/share more easily profiles between Chrome and Headless Chrome. See https://crbug.com/775703 and https://crbug.com/617931 for more information.

Can I reuse the profile from previous versions of Headless Chrome?

Yes, you just need to move all folders into a Default directory. So if you stored your profile in <profile> you would run the following bash commands:

cd <profile>

mkdir Default

mv * Default

Please report any issues at crbug.com/new

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "headless-dev" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to headless-dev...@chromium.org.

[rjs...@google.com]

"so you can reuse/share more easily profiles between Chrome and Headless Chrome"

I'm running the latest Chrome Canary. How do I reuse profiles between Chrome and Headless Chrome? Or is this not yet implemented (as the status of https://crbug.com/617931 maybe suggests)?

I'm trying to use headless Chrome to access a page that requires login: so I want to reuse my logged in state from regular Chrome but in headless mode.

Thanks,

Robbie

[dvallet (Chromium)]

Chrome uses a Default location where it stores user profiles (see https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/user_data_dir.md#Default-Location) . If you run headless with --user-data-dir pointing to that directory, it should pick up the "Default" profile's local storage and cookies. 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "headless-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to headless-dev...@chromium.org.
To post to this group, send email to headle...@chromium.org.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/3830c79c-2f16-4209-908f-313a69012458%40chromium.org.

[romanoa...@gmail.com]

it should pick up the "Default" profile's local storage and cookies. 

 

Have you tried it before? I can't reuse cookies neither using --user-data-dir or --profile-dir.

Can you show a full command line example?

Thx

[dvallet (Chromium)]

This is confirmed working. If you want to test it you can run both chrome with --headless and without the flag and the same --user-data-dir directory:

google-chrome-unstable --user-data-dir=/tmp/user1 http://www.google.com

google-chrome-unstable --headless --user-data-dir=/tmp/user1 --remote-debugging-port=9222

=> You can then inspect cookies in the headless mode and you'll see that Google cookies are there

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/e4d37f13-dedf-4eb8-a3f9-398165ea075d%40chromium.org.

[romanoa...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the reply.

It should work, but I just tried and the Cookies section is simply empty.

Another thing I noticed is although all the cookies are being stored in the encrypted "PROFILE/Cookies" file, they're not being read on the future sessions.

Any thoughts?

I'm running on 64 unstable version.

[romanoa...@gmail.com]

I tested it again and the cookies now are being read, BUT to make it work I had to navigate to another website before closing the browser.

That's weird, but it worked. Thanks a million!

[Sami Kyostila]

It sounds like we aren't perhaps flushing the cookie storage properly to disk before exiting. How are you shutting down the browser in this case?

- Sami

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/17c31630-2670-4698-8195-65c8b971cd36%40chromium.org.

[romanoa...@gmail.com]

Well spotted. I double tested here and in a headfull session, closing the brower using the UI it flushes correclty to the disk.

In a headless session sending an INTERRUPT or a TERM signal both doesn't flush at all. I explain: I navigated to github.com and the firstview cookies were flushed, then I logged in and the session cookies were not flushed.

Probably it's my fault and I'm closing it wrong in the terminal.

[Alex Clarke]

Browser.close might be what you're looking for.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to headless-dev+unsubscribe@chromium.org.

To post to this group, send email to headle...@chromium.org.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/2a9b515b-66bf-47f0-bf43-d8b718639648%40chromium.org.

[dvallet (Chromium)]

I've heard from Puppeteer users that cookie storage can be flaky when closing down the browser.

I've created a bug to track this: https://crbug.com/792187

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/2a9b515b-66bf-47f0-bf43-d8b718639648%40chromium.org.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "headless-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to headless-dev...@chromium.org.
To post to this group, send email to headle...@chromium.org.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/headless-dev/CAPG_qM5ifeSR1kjAoXtQao78%3DXfOv8rv4AhguGxv%3DcvijeB8YQ%40mail.gmail.com.