apify/crawlee · error · CookieParseError

Could not parse cookie header string: ${cookieHeaderString}

Error message

Could not parse cookie header string: ${cookieHeaderString}

What it means

This library parses Set-Cookie headers from an HTTP response into cookie objects using a cookie parser. When parsing any cookie header string fails (malformed syntax), the library wraps the failure in a CookieParseError carrying the raw header strings. It is thrown from getCookiesFromResponse, used by response processing and the cookies() helper.

Source

Thrown at packages/core/src/cookie_utils.ts:22

import { serviceLocator } from './service_locator.js';
import { CookieParseError } from './session_pool/errors.js';

export interface ResponseLike {
    url?: string | (() => string);
    headers?: Record<string, string | string[] | undefined> | (() => Record<string, string | string[] | undefined>);
}

/**
 * @internal
 */
export function getCookiesFromResponse(response: Response): Cookie[] {
    const headers = response.headers;
    const cookieHeaders = headers.getSetCookie();

    try {
        return cookieHeaders.map((cookie) => Cookie.parse(cookie)!);
    } catch (e) {
        throw new CookieParseError(cookieHeaders);
    }
}

/**
 * Calculate cookie expiration date
 * @param maxAgeSecs
 * @returns Calculated date by session max age seconds.
 * @internal
 */
export function getDefaultCookieExpirationDate(maxAgeSecs: number) {
    return new Date(Date.now() + maxAgeSecs * 1000);
}

/**
 * Transforms tough-cookie to puppeteer cookie.
 * @param toughCookie Cookie from CookieJar
 * @return Cookie compatible with browser pool
 * @internal

View on GitHub (pinned to dbe57fb09c)

Solutions

1. Inspect response.headers.getSetCookie() to find the malformed cookie string
2. Sanitize or drop invalid Set-Cookie headers before passing the response to the crawler pipeline
3. Use a proxy/interceptor to rewrite broken cookie headers at the source
4. Catch CookieParseError and fall back to a lenient manual cookie parse

Example fix

// before
const cookies = headers.getSetCookie(); // one entry is malformed
// after
const cookies = headers.getSetCookie().filter((c) => /^[^=]+=[^;]*;/.test(c));

const cookieHeaders = response.headers.getSetCookie();
const valid = cookieHeaders.filter((c) => /^[^=,;\s]+=[^;]*;?/.test(c));

try { return await cookies(response); } catch (e) { if ((e as Error).name === 'CookieParseError') return fallbackManualParse((e as CookieParseError).cookieHeaders); throw e; }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling processHttpResponse or cookies() on a Response whose headers.getSetCookie() returns one or more malformed cookie strings that Cookie.parse cannot parse.

Common situations: Scraping servers or proxies emitting non-standard Set-Cookie values (broken quoting, invalid dates, control characters); intercepting/replaying responses with hand-crafted headers; proxy middleware corrupting headers.

Related errors

• Request with GET method cannot have a payload.
• Cannot fetch a request list from ${requestsFromUrl}: ${err}
• Cannot fetch a request list from ${requestsFromUrl}: ${err}
• The HTTP method CONNECT is not supported by the GotScrapingH
• Too many redirects (${maxRedirects}) while requesting ${curr

AI-assisted analysis of apify/crawlee@dbe57fb09c (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/00fca6557742beaa. Report an issue: GitHub.