Re: Posting an XML document to a protected API

7stud -- wrote:
> 7stud -- wrote:
>> 7stud -- wrote:
>>> 7stud -- wrote:
>>>> The first thing I would do is try to get a response from the server 
>>>> without all the variables in your request string.  To begin with, you 
>>>> need a valid API key and a valid session key.  Then you can try 
>>>> something like this:
>>>>
>>> 
>>> I lied.  That's not the first thing I would try.  The first thing I 
>>> would try is posting your url into your browser's address bar to see if 
>>> you get a response.
>> 
>> If that didn't work, then I would start looking for the specs on valid 
>> host names.
>> 
>> ----
>> Restrictions on valid host names
>> 
>> Hostnames are composed of series of labels concatenated with dots, as 
>> are all domain names[1]. For example, "en.wikipedia.org" is a hostname. 
>> Each label must be between 1 and 63 characters long, and the entire 
>> hostname has a maximum of 255 characters.
>> 
>> RFCs mandate that a hostname's labels may contain only the ASCII letters 
>> 'a' through 'z' (case-insensitive), the digits '0' through '9', and the 
>> hyphen. Hostname labels cannot begin or end with a hyphen. No other 
>> symbols, punctuation characters, or blank spaces are permitted.
>> ------
> 
> Then I would determine that this format is a mistake:
> 
>>the URL should be of the format:
> 
>>http://#{API_KEY}@#{BACKEND_HOST}:#{BACKEND_PORT}/#{PATH_TO_RESOURCE}?>session_key=#{SESSION_KEY}
> 
> and I would try the following instead:
> 
> http://#{BACKEND_HOST}:#{BACKEND_PORT}/#{API_KEY}@#{BACKEND_HOST}:#{BACKEND_PORT}#{PATH_TO_RESOURCE}?session_key=#{SESSION_KEY}
> 
> or some variation thereof.

Also, after looking around some more, I would try a variation based on 
the following format:

-----------------
2.1. The main parts of URLs

   A full BNF description of the URL syntax is given in Section 5.

   In general, URLs are written as follows:

       <scheme>:<scheme-specific-part>

3. Specific Schemes

   The mapping for some existing standard and experimental protocols is
   outlined in the BNF syntax definition.  Notes on particular protocols
   follow. The schemes covered are:

   ftp                     File Transfer protocol
   http                    Hypertext Transfer Protocol
   gopher                  The Gopher protocol
   mailto                  Electronic mail address
   news                    USENET news
   nntp                    USENET news using NNTP access
   telnet                  Reference to interactive sessions
   wais                    Wide Area Information Servers
   file                    Host-specific file names
   prospero                Prospero Directory Service

   Other schemes may be specified by future specifications. Section 4 of
   this document describes how new schemes may be registered, and lists
   some scheme names that are under development.


3.1. Common Internet Scheme Syntax

   While the syntax for the rest of the URL may vary depending on the
   particular scheme selected, URL schemes that involve the direct use
   of an IP-based protocol to a specified host on the Internet use a
   common syntax for the scheme-specific data:

        //<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<url-path>

   Some or all of the parts "<user>:<password>@", ":<password>",
   ":<port>", and "/<url-path>" may be excluded.  The scheme specific
   data start with a double slash "//" to indicate that it complies with
   the common Internet scheme syntax. The different components obey the
   following rules:

    user
        An optional user name. Some schemes (e.g., ftp) allow the
        specification of a user name.

    password
        An optional password. If present, it follows the user
        name separated from it by a colon.

   The user name (and password), if present, are followed by a
   commercial at-sign "@". Within the user and password field, any ":",
   "@", or "/" must be encoded.




Berners-Lee, Masinter & McCahill                                [Page 5]

RFC 1738            Uniform Resource Locators (URL)        December 1994


   Note that an empty user name or password is different than no user
   name or password; there is no way to specify a password without
   specifying a user name. E.g., <URL:ftp://@host.com/> has an empty
   user name and no password, <URL:ftp://host.com/> has no user name,
   while <URL:ftp://foo:@host.com/> has a user name of "foo" and an
   empty password.

    host
        The fully qualified domain name of a network host, or its IP
        address as a set of four decimal digit groups separated by
        ".". Fully qualified domain names take the form as described
        in Section 3.5 of RFC 1034 [13] and Section 2.1 of RFC 1123
        [5]: a sequence of domain labels separated by ".", each domain
        label starting and ending with an alphanumerical character and
        possibly also containing "-" characters. The rightmost domain
        label will never start with a digit, though, which
        syntactically distinguishes all domain names from the IP
        addresses.

    port
        The port number to connect to. Most schemes designate
        protocols that have a default port number. Another port number
        may optionally be supplied, in decimal, separated from the
        host by a colon. If the port is omitted, the colon is as well.

    url-path
        The rest of the locator consists of data specific to the
        scheme, and is known as the "url-path". It supplies the
        details of how the specified resource can be accessed. Note
        that the "/" between the host (or port) and the url-path is
        NOT part of the url-path.

   The url-path syntax depends on the scheme being used, as does the
   manner in which it is interpreted.
---------------

Note the statement:

---
there is no way to specify a password without
   specifying a user name
----

which after comparing formats is what your url is doing.
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.