1318948 - WebExtension cookies API does not work in private browsing

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1354229

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect, P1)

Description

[Jesper Kristensen]

WebExtension cookies API does not work in private browsing. I am not sure when it stopped working.

Comment 1

[Jesper Kristensen]

Attachment: Bug 1318948 - Fix WebExtension cookies API in private browsing

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/94270/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/94270/

Comment 2

[Jesper Kristensen]

I uploaded a patch. There are no unit tests yet. I could not find any unit tests that test if the cookies seen by the WebExtension API are the same as the cookies seen by websites. I am not sure how to create such a unit test.

Comment 3

[Jesper Kristensen]

Comment on attachment 8812587 [details]
Bug 1318948 - Fix WebExtension cookies API in private browsing

Review request updated; see interdiff: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/94270/diff/1-2/

Comment 4

[Jesper Kristensen]

I made an attempt at a unit test, but it does not show the cookie header. I can't figure out why.

Comment 5

[Jesper Kristensen]

Comment on attachment 8812587 [details]
Bug 1318948 - Fix WebExtension cookies API in private browsing

Review request updated; see interdiff: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/94270/diff/2-3/

Comment 6

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

I was hoping this might address bug 1309637 but it doesn't appear to.

Comment 7

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

I encountered this issue while creating a cookie manager (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/a-cookie-manager/) and independently discovered that privateBrowsingId is missing from OriginAttributes. The fix in the patch looks good to me (but I would create a separate variable to store {userContextId,privateBrowsingId} instead of duplicating the dictionary).
Why has this not landed yet?

(In reply to Jesper Kristensen from comment #4)
> I made an attempt at a unit test, but it does not show the cookie header. I
> can't figure out why.

Jesper, what can I do to help you with finishing this patch?

Comment 8

[Jesper Kristensen]

As I said in comment #2 I could not find out how to make a unit test that tests what cookies a website would actually see and set.

Comment 9

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

You can use a content script (or just a normal web page) and use the document.cookie DOM API to read/write cookies.

See the test case in comment 2 at bug 1354229 for an example of writing cookies.

Comment 10

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

I've submitted a patch for 1354229 that is going to fix this.

If you are interested in seeing how to access document.cookie as I suggested in my previous comment (comment 9), look at the getDocumentCookie function in the test in the second patch.

Comment 11

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Now bug 1354229 has landed, the documentation needs to be updated:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/cookies/set
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/cookies/remove

needs to mention that writing/removing private browsing cookies was broken up until Firefox 55.
As of Firefox 56, writing private browsing cookies works as expected.

Comment 12

[Chris Mills [:cmills]]

oops, sorry!

Comment 13

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

I've updated the compat notes for those 2 pages:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/cookies/set#Browser_compatibility
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/cookies/remove#Browser_compatibility

Since this seems like a straightforward change, I'm marking it as dev-doc-complete, but let me know if we need anything else here.