4 ms·

Well he's just spelling out the steps to explain HTTP Digest. In the real world, any HTTP client library worth using already implements HTTP authentication tra

by Andys 17y ago

Well he's just spelling out the steps to explain HTTP Digest. In the real world, any HTTP client library worth using already implements HTTP authentication transparently to you, the API consumer.

jasonkester 17y ago
That's actually surprising, that the default behavior for a HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() method would be to parse the response and decide to send off a second request automatically. I would expect some developer involvement would be required. Regardless, assuming I'm using your library, I'd still need to do a request, some XML parsing to discover the right url, followed by a second request, just to get back the response I want. Compared to 1 request, that's still 3 times the effort for no added benefit.
- DougBTX 17y ago
  It's an interesting artefact of the libraries we use that digest authentication is difficult, but you can "just use" SSL.
  - psadauskas 17y ago
    They make digest easy, too: curl --anyayth --user admin:sekret http://exmaple.com/resource_protected_by_digest_auth
- kragen 17y ago
  Most libraries I've used have the option to respond to 401s automatically, and a lot of them have HTML parsing, too. There are some added benefits. The load-balancing example he gives in the article is one; a second one is that there's less stuff to get wrong in the client code, generally. Instead of working from some informal equivalent of WSDL, you're writing code that interrogates the service at run-time to find the current definition of the interface.
- jamie_ca 17y ago
  If more people did proper restful applications, perhaps there would also be proper libraries for interacting with them? Perhaps something that looks like this (with a ruby flavor): RestfulApi.new('http://api.twiddla.com/ http://api.twiddla.com/, :user => 'billy', :password => 'ILikeRainbows').post('Meetings')
  - psadauskas 17y ago
    Yes, exactly. I've written a (rough) DataMapper adapter for interfacing with them. class User include DataMapper::Resource resource_name "AllUsers" # define some properties end User.first(:login => "admin") http://github.com/absperf/dm-ssbe-adapter/tree http://github.com/absperf/dm-ssbe-adapter/tree

by Andys 17y ago

Well he's just spelling out the steps to explain HTTP Digest. In the real world, any HTTP client library worth using already implements HTTP authentication transparently to you, the API consumer.

jasonkester 17y ago

That's actually surprising, that the default behavior for a HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() method would be to parse the response and decide to send off a second request automatically. I would expect some developer involvement would be required. Regardless, assuming I'm using your library, I'd still need to do a request, some XML parsing to discover the right url, followed by a second request, just to get back the response I want. Compared to 1 request, that's still 3 times the effort for no added benefit.

DougBTX 17y ago
It's an interesting artefact of the libraries we use that digest authentication is difficult, but you can "just use" SSL.
- psadauskas 17y ago
  They make digest easy, too: curl --anyayth --user admin:sekret http://exmaple.com/resource_protected_by_digest_auth
kragen 17y ago
Most libraries I've used have the option to respond to 401s automatically, and a lot of them have HTML parsing, too. There are some added benefits. The load-balancing example he gives in the article is one; a second one is that there's less stuff to get wrong in the client code, generally. Instead of working from some informal equivalent of WSDL, you're writing code that interrogates the service at run-time to find the current definition of the interface.
jamie_ca 17y ago
If more people did proper restful applications, perhaps there would also be proper libraries for interacting with them? Perhaps something that looks like this (with a ruby flavor): RestfulApi.new('http://api.twiddla.com/ http://api.twiddla.com/, :user => 'billy', :password => 'ILikeRainbows').post('Meetings')
- psadauskas 17y ago
  Yes, exactly. I've written a (rough) DataMapper adapter for interfacing with them. class User include DataMapper::Resource resource_name "AllUsers" # define some properties end User.first(:login => "admin") http://github.com/absperf/dm-ssbe-adapter/tree http://github.com/absperf/dm-ssbe-adapter/tree