From: Niklas Frykholm <r2d2@...>
Date: 2002-02-18T09:46:19+09:00
Subject: Re: net/http or webfetcher with pasworded urls

[Ron Jeffries]:
> Is there a way to use webfetcher, or at least net/http, with a
> passworded URL?

No support for this in webfetcher yet, I'm afraid. Though it doesn't
seem that hard to add.

> What am I missing, and where should I have read about it?

You cannot use a passworded URL directly with Net::HTTP, since
Net::HTTP doesn't really parse URLs. (Upcoming URI class will, I
suppose.)

This is from the net/http.rb file in the standard library (1.7):

	=== Basic Authentication

		require 'net/http'

		Net::HTTP.start( 'auth.some.domain' ) {|http|
			response , = http.get( '/need-auth.cgi',
					'Authentication' =>
					["#{account}:#{password}"].pack('m').strip )
			print response.body
		}

	In version 1.2 (Ruby 1.7 or later), you can write like this:

		require 'net/http'

		req = Net::HTTP::Get.new('/need-auth.cgi')
		req.basic_auth 'account', 'password'
		Net::HTTP.start( 'auth.some.domain' ) {|http|
			response = http.request(req)
			print response.body
		}

// Niklas