fix: bypass Google cookie consent wall breaking all searches

[robertojrdev]

Summary

• Pre-set the SOCS cookie on the primp Client before making the request to Google Flights. Google now shows a "Before you continue" cookie consent page before serving any content, causing all flight searches to fail with "No flights found".
• Remove stray print(data) debug statement in parser.py that dumped the raw JSON payload to stdout on every search.

Problem

Google changed their consent flow — all requests to google.com/travel/flights now return a cookie consent wall instead of flight results. The primp client receives HTML containing "Before you continue to Google" instead of the expected flight data page. This breaks every search regardless of route, date, or configuration.

Fix

Setting the SOCS cookie tells Google that cookie consent has already been given. The consent wall is skipped and the actual flight results page is returned.

client.set_cookies(URL, {"SOCS": "CAISNQgD..."})

Testing

Before fix:

$ flight-search JFK LAX --date 2026-05-20
Error: No flights found. Check your airports and dates.

After fix:

$ flight-search JFK LAX --date 2026-05-20
Found 30 flights
  American | $235 | 7:04 -> 12:33 | 2 leg(s)
  Delta    | $246 | 8:00 -> 11:10 | 1 leg(s)
  ...

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Improved flight search result retrieval reliability and consistency by enhancing request handling for more dependable performance.

• Chores

  • Removed debug code.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR contains two targeted improvements to the flight-fetching system: a SOCS cookie is pre-set in the request handler to bypass Google's consent wall that blocks results, and a debug print statement is removed from the parser for cleaner output during extraction.

Changes

Flight Fetching Improvements

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Request Cookie Setup fast_flights/fetcher.py	The fetcher now pre-sets a SOCS cookie on the Google Flights URL before making requests, with explanatory comments about bypassing the consent wall.
Debug Statement Cleanup fast_flights/parser.py	A print(data) debug statement is removed from parse_js, allowing the function to proceed directly from data extraction to JSON parsing.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~8 minutes

Poem

🐰 A cookie crumb placed just right,
Bypasses consent with all its might,
Debug prints fade to silent dreams,
Flight data flows in cleaner streams! ✈️

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The PR title accurately describes the main change: adding logic to bypass Google's cookie consent wall that was breaking searches. This directly matches the primary objective and the changes in fetcher.py.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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[coderabbitai]

🧹 Nitpick comments (1)

fast_flights/fetcher.py (1)

86-90: ⚡ Quick win

Harden consent-cookie handling to avoid repeat outages.

The hardcoded SOCS payload is fragile; if Google changes it, searches can silently fail again. Please move this value to a named constant/config override (env var) so it can be rotated without code edits.

Suggested change

+import os
+
 URL = "https://www.google.com/travel/flights"
+DEFAULT_SOCS_COOKIE = "CAISNQgDEitib3FfaWRlbnRpdHlmcm9udGVuZHVpc2VydmVyXzIwMjMwODE1LjA3X3AxGgJlbiACGgYIgJnPpwY"
+SOCS_COOKIE = os.getenv("FAST_FLIGHTS_SOCS_COOKIE", DEFAULT_SOCS_COOKIE)
...
-        client.set_cookies(URL, {"SOCS": "CAISNQgDEitib3FfaWRlbnRpdHlmcm9udGVuZHVpc2VydmVyXzIwMjMwODE1LjA3X3AxGgJlbiACGgYIgJnPpwY"})
+        client.set_cookies(URL, {"SOCS": SOCS_COOKIE})

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@fast_flights/fetcher.py` around lines 86 - 90, The hardcoded SOCS cookie in
the call to client.set_cookies with URL is fragile; change it to read from a
named constant that can be overridden via an environment variable (e.g.,
FAST_FLIGHTS_SOCS or SOCS_COOKIE) so operators can rotate the payload without
code edits; update the code around client.set_cookies to load
process.env.FAST_FLIGHTS_SOCS (fall back to the existing literal only if env var
is absent), surface a clear log/warning when falling back, and ensure the
constant name is used wherever SOCS is referenced so the value can be changed
centrally or injected by config.

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Nitpick comments:
In `@fast_flights/fetcher.py`:
- Around line 86-90: The hardcoded SOCS cookie in the call to client.set_cookies
with URL is fragile; change it to read from a named constant that can be
overridden via an environment variable (e.g., FAST_FLIGHTS_SOCS or SOCS_COOKIE)
so operators can rotate the payload without code edits; update the code around
client.set_cookies to load process.env.FAST_FLIGHTS_SOCS (fall back to the
existing literal only if env var is absent), surface a clear log/warning when
falling back, and ensure the constant name is used wherever SOCS is referenced
so the value can be changed centrally or injected by config.

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: b4eb98b2-e76b-4d0a-a45a-0cdd9c0ae461

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 0138641 and bda1e2c.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• fast_flights/fetcher.py
• fast_flights/parser.py

💤 Files with no reviewable changes (1)

• fast_flights/parser.py