Re: [syndication] Authenticated Access to RSS

[Dion Loy <dion-yhoo@loy-fu.com>]

This doesn't and shouldn't require RSS-level support in the RSS spec.
This is already done at the HTTP level. It would be relatively
trivial for current RSS readers (if they don't already) to support
HTTP authentication (base64 at the very least, maybe NTLM if they want
to get fancy).

Webservers really don't care what kind of stuff they serve up. If the
directory is password protected, it will simply challenge for the
authentication, HTML, XML, whatever.

Saturday, December 15, 2001, 6:35:47 PM, you wrote:

DK> Scott Loftensness and I were discussing something off-list, and it got me
DK> thinking about how to provide authenticated access to syndication when using
DK> a desktop RSS-reader such as Radio or Headline Viewer. Here's the challenge.
DK> In an intranet environment, once can restrict access to RSS files at the
DK> network layer. That is, using firewalls and VPNs one can control who can
DK> reach the HTTP server that delivers the files.

DK> But what about an extranet environment? Suppose you want to publish weblogs
DK> and their associated RSS files, but restrict them to customers, vendors and
DK> other partners? It's easy to use basic authentication (username/password) to
DK> limit access to the HTML renderings of the weblogs, but what about the XML?
DK> For instance, do any of the RSS viewers support authentication? Are there
DK> any considerations within the various RSS specs themselves for
DK> authentication? (They're just XML, so I imagine not.)

DK> Any other suggestions on how one would handle this challenge?

DK> (Cross-posted to http://blogbook.weblogger.com.)

DK>      ...doug

DK> Doug Kaye
DK> doug@rds.com



 

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