Can I set the cookies to be used by a WKWebView?

Question

I'm trying to switch an existing app from UIWebView to WKWebView. The current app manages the users login / session outside of the webview and sets the cookies required for authentication into the the NSHTTPCookieStore. Unfortunately new WKWebView doesn't use the cookies from the NSHTTPCookieStorage. Is there another way to achieve this?

Answer 1

Edit for iOS 11+ only

Use WKHTTPCookieStore:

let cookie = HTTPCookie(properties: [
    .domain: "example.com",
    .path: "/",
    .name: "MyCookieName",
    .value: "MyCookieValue",
    .secure: "TRUE",
    .expires: NSDate(timeIntervalSinceNow: 31556926)
])! 

webView.configuration.websiteDataStore.httpCookieStore.setCookie(cookie)

Since you are pulling them over from HTTPCookeStorage, you can do this:

let cookies = HTTPCookieStorage.shared.cookies ?? []
for cookie in cookies {
    webView.configuration.websiteDataStore.httpCookieStore.setCookie(cookie)
}

Old answer for iOS 10 and below

If you require your cookies to be set on the initial load request, you can set them on NSMutableURLRequest. Because cookies are just a specially formatted request header this can be achieved like so:

WKWebView * webView = /*set up your webView*/
NSMutableURLRequest * request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://example.com/index.html"]];
[request addValue:@"TeskCookieKey1=TeskCookieValue1;TeskCookieKey2=TeskCookieValue2;" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Cookie"];
// use stringWithFormat: in the above line to inject your values programmatically
[webView loadRequest:request];

If you require subsequent AJAX requests on the page to have their cookies set, this can be achieved by simply using WKUserScript to set the values programmatically via javascript at document start like so:

WKUserContentController* userContentController = WKUserContentController.new;
WKUserScript * cookieScript = [[WKUserScript alloc] 
    initWithSource: @"document.cookie = 'TeskCookieKey1=TeskCookieValue1';document.cookie = 'TeskCookieKey2=TeskCookieValue2';"
    injectionTime:WKUserScriptInjectionTimeAtDocumentStart forMainFrameOnly:NO];
// again, use stringWithFormat: in the above line to inject your values programmatically
[userContentController addUserScript:cookieScript];
WKWebViewConfiguration* webViewConfig = WKWebViewConfiguration.new;
webViewConfig.userContentController = userContentController;
WKWebView * webView = [[WKWebView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(/*set your values*/) configuration:webViewConfig];

Combining these two techniques should give you enough tools to transfer cookie values from Native App Land to Web View Land. You can find more info on the cookie javascript API on Mozilla's page if you require some more advanced cookies.

Yeah, it sucks that Apple is not supporting many of the niceties of UIWebView. Not sure if they will ever support them, but hopefully they will get on this soon. Hope this helps!