Clip sites with paywalls in DTTG

When using the Share extension with DTTG it ‘follows’ the clipped URL - this is great e.g. with URL shorteners as it locates the target link, rather than the shortened link.

But with paywalled sites it also causes problems. E.g. I clip a link to an article on a paywalled site: https://www.topics.nl/zelflerende-computer-klopt-coureurs-van-vlees-en-bloed-in-racegame-op-playstation-a17026820vk/ - but because the Share Extension isn’t logged in, it redirects to the login part of the site: DPG Media Privacy Gate. When opening the original link in DT I can put in the credentials and make it work, but the share extension apparently doesn’t share cookies with DTTG.

  • Is it possible for the DTTG share extension to share cookies with the DTTG app to prevent this from happening? (From my own programming I know that NSURLSession can technically share cookies, but not sure ofcourse if that fits the design of DTTG)
  • If not possible: is there a way to prevent DTTG from ‘following’ the link (for specific sites)? Because it grabs the URL and title from Safari first the are correct on the first clip, but actually update to the wrong URL / title.

The work around for this would be an iOS shortcut, but it would be nice if this could be solved with DTTG.

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Hopefully not. The share extension is running in your browser, and DTTG is a completely different app. You’re basically asking your browser to leak its content to other apps. Which it will not and should not do.

DTTG is running its own instance of a webview (or something like that) which should have its own cookie jar.

I’m not sure how NSURLSession relates to that. It also hopefully only shares cookies within one app and does not give them away to some completely unrelated different program. If it where, that would be a very huge security blunder. Not that Apple were incapable of those, but even they hopefully do not permit their APIs to leak data to other Apps.

One solution would be to not clip the link but rather the content in a non-HTML format.

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Try browsing and clipping via a bookmark in DEVONthink To Go.

That not how I would look at it. It’s the share extension provided by DTTG so in my view they are closely linked. It’s also how it is provided: if you delete DTTG you also delete the share extension as they’re part of the same package.

I wouldn’t mind them having a separate cookie jar (even preferably) but what is problematic in this case is that I can’t influence the cookie jar used by the share extension, leading to the issue I described.

I’m talking about sharing a cookie jar in the same code base. Off topic maybe, but when downloading something with NSURLSession (guessing the share extension might use that) it can share cookies with a WKWebview - see this example: https://github.com/mdbraber/fastmate/commit/2d58e7af73c56962b35ede71796c3f45909fd338#r38465564

That might be an option indeed - but it would already help if just the original non-redirected URL and page title could be saved. Because those are now redirected to a login page I can’t save the intended (original) URL at all

That would be a workaround indeed - but because the URL is redirected (because no cookies are used to save login details) I simply can’t clip the non-redirected boomkmark (other than by resorting to using a bookmarklet or iOS shortcut)

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Hi bluefrog, can you walk through this step by step? Do I start in safari or DTTG? Thanks.

Either is fine. You can clip a bookmark into DEVONthink To Go or start a new bookmark in the New Document Assistant in DEVONthink To Go.

When you click on the bookmark, you’re browsing in a normal web view. Try logging into a site and capturing a page.

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How do I capture a page in the DEVONthink browser?
I tried the 3 dots in lower left > convert > to markdown, it still doesn’t capture the logged in page.
Using the clip to DEVONthink in share sheet on iOS also same result.

Providing a URL would be helpful.

And if you read the thread, you will see this is not something that can be guaranteed. Subscription/paywalled sites often employ methods to keep you browsing on their sites and prohibit – or at least make difficult – capturing their content.

This is what I’m trying to capture.

My workaround I just tried is to use reader view, then select all, and paste to a new formatted note in DTTG. Totally manually.

Have you noticed that this page is behind a pay firewall?

Yes of course. This is exactly what this topic is about.
The site gives several free articles for registered users per day though.

Oh!!! I mistook the thread!!! :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: