Cookie Support

When You Need Cookies

Some web pages require authentication to access — paywalled articles, private documentation, internal wikis. mddir supports passing a cookies file to fetch these pages.

Usage

mddir add docs https://private.example.com/page --cookies ~/cookies.txt

The --cookies flag accepts a path to a Netscape cookies.txt file. Cookies are sent with every HTTP request made during that add command.

Supported Format

mddir uses the Netscape cookies.txt format (tab-separated), which is the standard format used by browsers and tools like curl.

Each line contains:

domain	flag	path	secure	expiry	name	value

Example:

.example.com	TRUE	/	TRUE	0	session_id	abc123
.example.com	TRUE	/	FALSE	1735689600	auth_token	xyz789

Exporting Cookies from Browsers

To get a cookies.txt file from your browser:

1. Install a cookies export extension (e.g., "Get cookies.txt LOCALLY" for Chrome/Firefox)
2. Navigate to the site you want to save pages from
3. Export the cookies for that domain
4. Save the file (e.g., ~/cookies.txt)

Then use it with mddir:

mddir add docs https://private.example.com/article --cookies ~/cookies.txt