From: trashcan at david-steuber.com (David Steuber)
Date: 10 Apr 1999 19:53:18 -0500
Subject: Internet Robot
References: <7ehe9m$hbs$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <m3emluaecc.fsf@solo.david-steuber.com> <7emldl$rh9$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Message-ID: <m3hfqo7zb5.fsf@solo.david-steuber.com>
Content-Length: 1748
X-UID: 54                                                  

gscot at my-dejanews.com writes:

-> David Steuber:	Thank you for the reply (and Thanks to every one that
-> replied). It was a big help to read over the rfc 1945 and rfc 2068. It is the
-> first time that I have every looked at one and they are pretty informative.  
->       I can now POST my request but the server is asking for authentication.

Hmm.  You are posting to a URL that requires authentication?

The way the server requests authentication is by sending down the
following headers (for basic authentication):

401 Unauthorized HTTP/1.0
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="WallyWorld"

To deal with that, you have to send up proper credentials.  The header 
looks something like this:

Authorization: Basic QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==

Where the last string is a Base64 encoded userid:password.

See section 11 in RFC-1945 for details.

-> You mentioned that it might be helpful to capture and look at the client's
-> out put. How do I do that.

This can be tricky.  Idealy, when talking to the server, you want an
HTTP client that will show you all the headers.  When talking to the
client, you want the server to display all the headers (or send them
back to the client).  I've always done this the hardway.  You can
actually talk to an HTTP server with telnet if you are desperate
enough.  I don't recomend it because one typo and you have to do the
request over again.

Other people responding mentioned a url package for python.  I would
take a look at that to see just what it can do.  It may make the job a 
lot easier.

-- 
David Steuber
http://www.david-steuber.com

s/trashcan/david/ to reply by mail
If you don't, I won't see it.

"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune."




