DIYgod/RSSHub · error · Error

Cookies expired. Please update WEIBO_COOKIES

Error message

Cookies expired. Please update WEIBO_COOKIES

What it means

Thrown by weibo getCookies() when the operator has pinned cookies via the WEIBO_COOKIES env var AND a renew was requested (the verifier saw an expired-cookie signal or too many API errors). Because user-supplied cookies are pinned, the auto visitor-cookie refresh path cannot run, so RSSHub surfaces this to force a manual cookie rotation.

Source

Thrown at lib/routes/weibo/utils.ts:55

};

const weiboUtils = {
    apiHeaders: {
        'MWeibo-Pwa': 1,
        'X-Requested-With': 'XMLHttpRequest',
        'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 11_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/604.1.38 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/11.0 Mobile/15A372 Safari/604.1',
    },
    RenewWeiboCookiesError,
    getCookies: (() => {
        const url = 'https://m.weibo.cn/';
        const coolingDownMessage = `Cooling down before new visitor Cookies from ${url} may be fetched`;
        let coolingDown = false;
        let visitorCookiesPromise: Promise<string> | undefined;

        return async (renew: any = false) => {
            if (config.weibo.cookies) {
                if (renew) {
                    throw new Error('Cookies expired. Please update WEIBO_COOKIES');
                }
                return config.weibo.cookies;
            }

            const cacheKey = 'weibo:visitor-cookies';
            if (renew) {
                cache.set(cacheKey, '', 1);
            }
            return await cache.tryGet(cacheKey, async () => {
                if (visitorCookiesPromise) {
                    return await visitorCookiesPromise;
                }
                if (coolingDown) {
                    if (renew?.message) {
                        logger.warn(coolingDownMessage);
                        throw renew;
                    }
                    throw new Error(coolingDownMessage);

View on GitHub (pinned to bed535e087)

Solutions

1. Re-open m.weibo.cn in a browser, copy the fresh Cookie header, and set WEIBO_COOKIES in the RSSHub env to the new value, then restart RSSHub.
2. Temporarily unset WEIBO_COOKIES so RSSHub falls back to automatic visitor-cookie acquisition via Playwright.
3. Check RSSHub logs for the preceding 'Cookies expired. Msg: ...' (error 623) to confirm the API-side expiry reason before rotating.

Example fix

// before (env)
WEIBO_COOKIES=SUB=_2A25...; SUBP=...   // stale
// after
WEIBO_COOKIES=SUB=_2A25<new>...; SUBP=<new>...   // refreshed from browser DevTools

// Before relying on pinned weibo cookies, sanity-check they are present and non-empty
if (process.env.WEIBO_COOKIES != null && process.env.WEIBO_COOKIES.trim() === '') {
    throw new Error('WEIBO_COOKIES is set but empty — weibo will report it as expired.');
}

function isWeiboCookieExpiryError(e: unknown): boolean {
    return e instanceof Error && /update WEIBO_COOKIES/i.test(e.message);
}

try {
    return await weiboUtils.tryWithCookies((cookies, verify) => fetchWeibo(cookies, verify));
} catch (e) {
    if (isWeiboCookieExpiryError(e)) {
        // surface to operator; do NOT auto-retry — pinned cookies need manual rotation
        monitoring.alert('weibo cookies expired', e);
    }
    throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Called from tryWithCookies after a RenewWeiboCookiesError (API ok === -100) or after >10 generic API errors: it calls getCookies(error), and since config.weibo.cookies is truthy with a truthy renew arg, the renew branch throws at utils.ts:55.

Common situations: The WEIBO_COOKIES env value has aged out (weibo sessions expire), the account was logged out, or weibo rotated its cookie validation. Common after running the same WEIBO_COOKIES for weeks/months.

Related errors

• Weibo Friends Timeline is not available due to the absense o
• Weibo Group Timeline is not available due to the absense of
• Weibo user bookmarks is not available due to the absense of
• Cookies expired. Msg: ${resp?.data?.msg || ''} ${resp?.data?
• BAIDU_COOKIE must contain BDUSS. Please check your cookie co

AI-assisted analysis of DIYgod/RSSHub@bed535e087 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/89c3db6065082bcc. Report an issue: GitHub.