pip has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Dear Monks, My question is: Is there possibly a perl script available to access an htaccess protected area? (by having data sent to it by a form input) This would mean to have the username and password added to the address in the browser. I had a look on the web, but could only find some scripts written in php (washing my mouth out with soap right now) Thanks, Pip
  • Comment on Login form to enable access to htaccess area?

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Re: Login form to enable access to htaccess area?
by scottj (Monk) on Feb 20, 2004 at 08:25 UTC
    From the LWP::UserAgent docs:
    $ua->credentials( $netloc, $realm, $uname, $pass )
    Set the user name and password to be used for a realm. It is often more useful to specialize the get_basic_credentials() method instead.
    I've not tried this, but LWP certainly supports it.
[reply]
      Hi Scottj, Thank's for your reply, I was kind of hoping I would get by without needing to install modules, due to my hosting facilities. I realize now it's not that simple. pip
[reply]
Re: Login form to enable access to htaccess area?
by chimni (Pilgrim) on Feb 20, 2004 at 04:26 UTC

    I would think so
    (if i understand your question correctly i.e)
    Try LWP or WWW::Mechanize (modules and docs at cpan.org.
    or you could try wget
    rgds
[reply]
      Hi Chimni, Thanks for your reply!
[reply]
Re: Login form to enable access to htaccess area?
by iburrell (Chaplain) on Feb 20, 2004 at 21:38 UTC
    Other people have mentioned how to access password protected pages from a Perl script as a client. Is this what you are asking about? Or do you want a HTML login form and CGI script that provides access to a password protected site? It is possible to have a CGI script redirect to a URL containing the username and password. 
    my $url = 'http://' . $username . ':' . $password '@' . 'www.example.c
+om/some_page.html';
print $cgi->redirect($url);

    [download]
    The problems are that this exposes the password in the URL bar. Putting it in frames can make it less obvious but it is still there. Also, a recent update to IE removes all support for usernames and passwords in http URLs. This completely stops any login script from working.
[reply]
[d/l]
      Note that the above trick also works if you are using LWP::Simple. And the update to IE doesn't affect LWP at all.
[reply]
        Thanks for your help, Tilly, as mentioned on my other replies, unfortunately I cannot install any modules on my server. pip
[reply]

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