Instagram Cookie Updater

Automatically refresh Instagram cookies using Selenium, save them in Netscape HTTP Cookie File format, and expose healthcheck and readiness endpoints via Flask. Designed for Dockerized, production-like deployments with Python.

Works well together with yt-dlp, gallery-dl or bots like ovchynnikov/load-bot-linux.

Features

• Python 3.13 support
• Periodic auto-refresh of cookies
• Exports cookies compatible with cURL and other tools
• Uses headless Firefox browser
• Full Docker and Docker Compose support
• Health monitoring via /status and /healthz endpoints
• Manual PR-based image build via GitHub Actions for debugging

Local Setup

• Dependency: Python 3.13

• Create Python virtualenv (required during first run):

  mkdir -p "${HOME}/.local/virtualenv" && \
    python3.13 -m venv ~/.local/virtualenv/instagram-cookie-generator && \
    source "${HOME}/.local/virtualenv/instagram-cookie-generator/bin/activate" && \
    pip install --upgrade pip

• Activate virtualenv:

  source "${HOME}/.local/virtualenv/instagram-cookie-generator/bin/activate"

• Install dependencies:

  pip install -e '.[dev]'

• Verify installed tools:

  black --version && \
  echo -n "isort " && isort --version-number && \
  mypy --version && \
  pylint --version

Running in Docker Compose

• Prepare environment variables:

  Copy .env.example to .env and edit your credentials:

  cp .env.example .env

• Run the container:

  docker compose up

• Healthcheck integration:

  Docker Compose is configured with a healthcheck using the /healthz endpoint:

  healthcheck:
    test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:5000/healthz"]
    interval: 2m
    timeout: 10s
    retries: 3

Make Targets

Make targets are self-documented.

List all available targets:

make help

Typical examples:

• make code-checks — Run full code quality checks
• make hooks-install — Install pre-commit hooks

Pre-Commit Hooks

This repository uses pre-commit to enforce code quality before each commit.

To install hooks:

make hooks-install

See configured checks inside .pre-commit-config.yaml.

Flask Health Endpoints

After startup, the Flask server exposes two health endpoints:

Endpoint	Purpose
GET /status	Returns rich cookie metadata: TTL, names, updated timestamp, version
GET /healthz	Returns 200 only if cookies are valid and not expired

Example usage:

curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/status
curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/healthz

GitHub Actions - Manual PR Docker Build

You can manually trigger a Docker image build and push to GHCR from any Pull Request. Useful for debugging changes before merging.

The workflow can be run from the Actions tab by selecting Manual PR Image Build and clicking "Run workflow".

Tag format: ghcr.io/vovinacci/instagram-cookie-generator:pr-<PR_NUMBER>

Code Style

Tool	Purpose
black	Code formatting
isort	Import sorting
mypy	Static type checking
pylint	Static linting

All tools are integrated via Makefile and pre-commit hooks.

Notes

• Dockerfile uses unpinned apt packages for simplicity; pinning can be added for strict reproducibility if needed.
• Logger supports both plain and JSON formats (configurable via .env).