HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Request, Authentication, LWP::Useragent

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

Is there a way the "Authenticate" a session with a web site when using HTTP::Headers and HTTP::Request? EX.\

my $headers = new HTTP:Headers(
    Referer => "http://www.perlmonks.org/"
);

my $request = new HTTP::Request(
    "POST",
    "http://www.excite.com/cgi-bin/usr44/mystuff.cgi",
    $headers
);

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;


my $response = $ua->request($request);
print $response->content;
[download]

I need to authenticate this session within my browser so that I may access this $request page without using my script.

ADAM

QUOTE:
Why Not!

Comment on HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Request, Authentication, LWP::Useragent Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Request, Authentication, LWP::Useragent by Daddio (Chaplain) on Mar 28, 2001 at 07:25 UTC
I don't know if I am understanding completely, but it sounds like you need to provide a username and password for a site? If that is the case, LWP::UserAgent has the authorization_basic method that can be used something like this (directly from the lwpcook manpage): Documents protected by basic authorization can easily be accessed like this: `use LWP::UserAgent; $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new; $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'http://www.asite.com/'); $req->authorization_basic('myuid', 'mypassword'); print $ua->request($req)->as_string;` [download] The other alternative is to provide a subclass of LWP::UserAgent that overrides the get_basic_credentials() method. Study the lwp-request program for an example of this. Hope that helps.	[reply] [d/l]
Re (tilly) 2: HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Request, Authentication, LWP::Useragent by tilly (Archbishop) on Mar 28, 2001 at 09:42 UTC
For one-off scripts it usually is really nice to use the fact that URLs have an optional "name:password@" between the protocol and the domain name. So you can write a URL like this: `http://your_name:your_password@www.nifty.com/some/page.html` [download]	[reply] [d/l]