HTTP POST and GET with cookies for authentication in python

Question

I'm trying to create a python program that logs in to my university's site using my id and password. This is the formal page for logging in: https://webapp.pucrs.br/consulta/

As you may notice, the two fields are named pr1 and pr2. The page uses POST to send the data. ALSO, there's a cookie that is downloaded when the page is loaded, it's a JSESSIONID containing a random value that, as I understood, you have to return on the header of the POST method to authenticate the login.

I wrote the following code, but the return page on the GET method says "The session was not initialized", probably cause the cookie was not sent back properly.

from urllib2 import Request, build_opener, HTTPCookieProcessor, HTTPHandler
import httplib, urllib, cookielib, Cookie, os

conn = httplib.HTTPConnection('webapp.pucrs.br')

#COOKIE FINDER
cj = cookielib.CookieJar()
opener = build_opener(HTTPCookieProcessor(cj),HTTPHandler())
req = Request('http://webapp.pucrs.br/consulta/principal.jsp')
f = opener.open(req)
html = f.read()
for cookie in cj:
    c = cookie
#FIM COOKIE FINDER

params = urllib.urlencode ({'pr1':111049631, 'pr2':<pass>})
headers = {"Content-type":"text/html",
           "Set-Cookie" : "JSESSIONID=70E78D6970373C07A81302C7CF800349"}
            # I couldn't set the value automaticaly here, the cookie object can't be converted to string, so I change this value on every session to the new cookie's value. Any solutions?

conn.request ("POST", "/consulta/servlet/consulta.aluno.ValidaAluno",params, headers) # Validation page
resp = conn.getresponse()

temp = conn.request("GET","/consulta/servlet/consulta.aluno.Publicacoes") # desired content page
resp = conn.getresponse()

print resp.read()

Where do I put this cookie so the login is authenticated?

Answer 1

I would try using the requests library. The documentation is excellent, and the code ends up being much cleaner than with urllib*

$ pip install requests

Using a session (see comment by Piotr) that handles cookies on its own, the result looks like this

import requests
url_0 = "http://webapp.pucrs.br/consulta/principal.jsp"
url = "https://webapp.pucrs.br/consulta/servlet/consulta.aluno.ValidaAluno"
data = {"pr1": "123456789", "pr2": "1234"}

s = requests.session()
s.get(url_0)
r = s.post(url, data)

It seems to work fine, as I get a "Usuario inexistente" notice for pr1 123456789 and "Sehna inválida" with your user-number.