How to Save Cookies to File Using Wget on Ubuntu

This article demonstrates how to utilize the wget command-line tool on Ubuntu to download files while capturing HTTP cookies. It covers the specific flags needed to store cookie data in a local text file and how to reuse that data for authenticated requests. Follow these steps to manage session states effectively without a graphical browser.

Install Wget

Most Ubuntu installations include wget by default. If it is missing, open your terminal and install it using the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install wget

Save Cookies During Download

To download a file and save the associated cookies to a text file simultaneously, use the --save-cookies flag. This creates a file containing the cookie data sent by the server during the request.

wget --save-cookies cookies.txt https://example.com/file.zip

In this command, cookies.txt will be created in your current directory. The file stores cookies in the Netscape format, which is compatible with most command-line tools.

Load Cookies for Subsequent Requests

If you need to download additional files from the same session or access protected content, use the --load-cookies flag. This tells wget to read the previously saved cookies and send them with the new request.

wget --load-cookies cookies.txt https://example.com/protected-file.zip

Handling Authentication Sessions

For websites requiring a login, you typically need to perform a POST request to save the session cookies first, then use those cookies to download the file.

1. Login and save cookies: bash wget --save-cookies cookies.txt --post-data 'user=name&pass=word' https://example.com/login
2. Download using saved cookies: bash wget --load-cookies cookies.txt https://example.com/secure-download.zip

Ensure you keep the cookies.txt file secure, as it may contain sensitive session tokens. Delete the file when you no longer need to maintain the session.