local storage

Examples

A lot of SPAs stash auth state, feature flags, or API config in local storage. If you only fetch the HTML, you won't see any of that.

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("https://example.com")

    token = page.evaluate("() => window.localStorage.getItem('auth_token')")
    print(token)

    browser.close()

You can also set local storage before loading a page if the app expects something to already be there.

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("https://example.com")
    page.evaluate("() => window.localStorage.setItem('region', 'us')")
    page.reload()
    browser.close()

Practical tips

• Local storage is browser-only: you need a real browser context or JS-capable renderer to read or write it.
• It's scoped by origin: https://app.example.com and https://www.example.com do not share the same local storage.
• It persists: unlike session storage, it survives tab closes and browser restarts unless cleared.
• Don't assume it's trustworthy: apps often put useful state there, but it's still client-side data and can be stale.
• For scraping, this is a production gotcha: if login state or API config lives in local storage, cheap request-only scraping breaks fast and you end up debugging the app, not the page.
• If the site depends on local storage, use browser automation: that's the clean answer. Trying to fake everything with raw requests gets fragile fast.

Use cases

• Reading auth state: some apps store bearer tokens or session metadata in local storage.
• Capturing app configuration: frontend code may pull API base URLs, region settings, or feature flags from local storage.
• Reproducing logged-in flows: setting expected keys before navigation can help load the same state a real user sees.
• Debugging scraper failures: when a page works in a browser but not in your scraper, missing local storage is one of the first things worth checking.