I'm looking at implementing a login system in an Electron[0] application which I'm building but getting stuck on the part of handling the session. Basically I want to store the users session so it is persisted between application restarts (if "Remember me" is enabled).

I have to make use of an existing back-end which works with cookie authentication and I'm not able to change anything there.

From the Electron documentation on the Session object[1] I gathered that I should be using a partition like f.e. persist:someName in order to have a persistent storage, but this is not persisted between application restarts as it seems.

The way I currently set the cookie is as follows:

// main-process/login.js

const session = require('electron').session;

const currentSession = session.fromPartition('persist:someName').cookies;

currentSession.set({
    name: 'myCookie',
    url: '',
    value: 'loggedin=1',
    expirationDate: 1531036000
}, function(error) {
    console.log('Cookie set');
    if (error) {
        console.dir(error);
    }
});

After running this, I see the Cookie set output, but when restarting the app and running the following code:

// main.js

const session = require('electron').session;

const currentSession = session.fromPartition('persist:someName').cookies;

currentSession.get({}, function(error, cookies) {
    console.dir(cookies);
    if (error) {
        console.dir(error);
    }
});

The output returned is [].

Any pointers as to what I'm doing wrong or need to do differently would be highly appreciated!

[0]
[1] /

I'm looking at implementing a login system in an Electron[0] application which I'm building but getting stuck on the part of handling the session. Basically I want to store the users session so it is persisted between application restarts (if "Remember me" is enabled).

I have to make use of an existing back-end which works with cookie authentication and I'm not able to change anything there.

From the Electron documentation on the Session object[1] I gathered that I should be using a partition like f.e. persist:someName in order to have a persistent storage, but this is not persisted between application restarts as it seems.

The way I currently set the cookie is as follows:

// main-process/login.js

const session = require('electron').session;

const currentSession = session.fromPartition('persist:someName').cookies;

currentSession.set({
    name: 'myCookie',
    url: 'https://www.example.',
    value: 'loggedin=1',
    expirationDate: 1531036000
}, function(error) {
    console.log('Cookie set');
    if (error) {
        console.dir(error);
    }
});

After running this, I see the Cookie set output, but when restarting the app and running the following code:

// main.js

const session = require('electron').session;

const currentSession = session.fromPartition('persist:someName').cookies;

currentSession.get({}, function(error, cookies) {
    console.dir(cookies);
    if (error) {
        console.dir(error);
    }
});

The output returned is [].

Any pointers as to what I'm doing wrong or need to do differently would be highly appreciated!

[0] http://electron.atom.io
[1] http://electron.atom.io/docs/api/session/

• javascript
• node.js
• session
• cookies
• electron

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jul 12, 2016 at 11:30 Revell asked Jul 8, 2016 at 7:16 RevellRevell 72333 gold badges88 silver badges2222 bronze badges 5

• 2 After looking into the issue some more, it appears this might be an issue with Electron releases after 1.2.2, as pointed out in this thread on GitHub: github./electron/electron/issues/6388 – Revell Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 9:32
• 1.: Check your import, I imagine " require('electron'] " may cause some problems. 2.: You could check out the localStorage API instead. – Jens Habegger Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 12:50
• @JensHabegger Yeah, that's been a typo in the script here, sorry! In the meantime it's turned out that this was an issue in Electron and I'm waiting for a new release with the fix for this to bee available. – Revell Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 11:29
• In my experience, the session API is full of unexplainable behavior. In my app, I get/set cookies before a window is ever created and in order for the cookies to actually get set, I had to first set them, and then get them all again (like session.cookies.get({}, () => {})). Doesn't make sense, but it does consistently work. – ccnokes Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 20:03
• Have you verified that it's not in the window via the Chrome dev tools? (Look under the Application or Resources tab). – ccnokes Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 20:05

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 1

An alternative might be to take a look at electron-json-storage. Using this plugin, you can write JSON to a system file throughout the user experience and then recall that file on the application load to replace the user "state".