How to open an URL in a browser with an authentication header? - go

Question

In Golang we can launch a browser window to open an URL using exec.Command method. An example can be found here
My question is how can we open that URL with a header?

Answer 1

If you're using Chrome, you could use Chrome DevTools Protocol to attach to a running Chrome instance and issue a command to navigate to a URL with specific headers.
First, Launch Chrome with Chrome Devtools Protocol enabled by using the flag --remote-debugging-port=9222
You'll get a response similar to DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:9222/devtools/browser/2393d6e8-a85d-40a2-a79e-13f1585ff336
Pass that ws://... URL into the program below:
package main
import (
"context"
"flag"
"log"
"github.com/chromedp/cdproto/network"
"github.com/chromedp/chromedp"
)
func main() {
var devToolWsURL string
flag.StringVar(&devToolWsURL, "devtools-ws-url", "", "DevTools Websocket URL")
flag.Parse()
// Create contexts.
actxt, cancelActxt := chromedp.NewRemoteAllocator(context.Background(), devToolWsURL)
defer cancelActxt()
// Create new tab.
ctxt, _ := chromedp.NewContext(actxt)
// Custom header.
headers := map[string]interface{}{
"X-Header": "my request header",
}
task := chromedp.Tasks{
network.Enable(),
network.SetExtraHTTPHeaders(network.Headers(headers)),
chromedp.Navigate("http://google.com"),
}
// Run task.
err := chromedp.Run(ctxt, task)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
}
Notes:
9222 is the default port for this protocol but you can use any port
you want.
I didn't include the exec.Command code for brevity.
References:
Header example
Remote Chrome control example
UPDATE
Found a simpler way. You can just launch Chrome straight from chromedp by overriding the default headless option:
func main() {
// Create contexts.
opts := append(chromedp.DefaultExecAllocatorOptions[:], chromedp.Flag("headless", false))
actx, cancel := chromedp.NewExecAllocator(context.Background(), opts...)
ctx, cancel := chromedp.NewContext(actx)
// Call cancel() to close Chrome on some condition.
if false {
cancel()
}
// Custom header.
headers := map[string]interface{}{
"X-Header": "my request header",
}
task := chromedp.Tasks{
network.Enable(),
network.SetExtraHTTPHeaders(network.Headers(headers)),
chromedp.Navigate("http://tested.com"),
}
// Run task.
err := chromedp.Run(ctx, task)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
}