Can Puppeteer capture a fully loaded session, including the dynamic page state and authentication details, to allow seamless resumption? Alternatively, is transferring cookies and local storage possible?
In practical experience, maintaining a browser session in Puppeteer entails more than just capturing cookies; you need to manage local storage and session state manually. I have found that saving cookies using page.cookies() along with local storage data via page.evaluate is a viable approach. After storing, these details can be reintroduced using page.setCookie() and page.evaluate to set the local storage values prior to navigation. Although Puppeteer does not offer a complete session capture, handling these elements separately has proven reliable, despite requiring extra coding effort.
i reckon you can work around it by saving cookies and LS data, then loading them on restart. however, some in-memmory states might be missed so you may need add some tweaks. its not a perfect session capture but works fine in many cases.
I have experimented with session persistence in Puppeteer and found that augmenting the basic storage of cookies with serialization of other browser contexts, such as indexes of DOM elements and user interactions, can be quite beneficial in rehydrating the session. In my work, I saved not only cookies and local storage but also captured some state through custom events to reapply on reload. This approach though not perfect, allowed a smoother transition for scenarios where dynamic device information was essential, though additional debugging was needed.
i tried a custom sassion store that saves extra page state. though its a bit hacky and specific per project, it can be a workable workaround. you still have to manage cookies and ls manually, but it worked decently in my small tests.