I disagree.  It seems counter-intuitive to me that every application that uses 
HttpClient should have to provide the same block of code to perform a 
function as fundamental as authentication.  HttpClient already handles most 
authentication, but doesn't currently allow for any form of user interaction.

An added benefit of using an integrated callback handler is the additional 
information available when authentication is required.  Although the code you 
provided is able to test the status code for a 401, it does not know what 
forms of authentication are available.  You could analyze the response header 
yourself, but this is already being performed by HttpClient.

-Steve

On Tuesday 30 September 2003 08:30 am, Adrian Sutton wrote:
> On 30/09/2003 10:12 PM, "Steve Vaughan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > One of our engineers developed a patch for HttpClient which allows a
> > callback handler to be registered with an HttpClient instance.  A
> > registered handler could prompt the user for username/password.  When a
> > handler isn't registered, the HttpClient works as it does now.
> >
> > -Steve
>
> The recommended way (at least as far as I'm concerned) of doing this is to
> do it outside of HttpClient since it is in effect outside of what a HTTP
> library should handle.  The HTTP library handles talking to the server,
> your code handles displaying the appropriate GUI and dealing with errors. 
> So what you do is deal with an unauthorized response like you would other
> recoverable errors (excuse the poor code, Entourage keeps capitalising
> things):
>
> For (int count = 0; count < MAX_ATTEMPTS; count++) {
>     GetMethod get = new GetMethod("http://auth.com";);
>     int response = httpclient.execute(get);
>     if (response >= 200 && response < 300) {
>         // Yay it worked.
>     } else if (response == 407) {
>         // Authorization required (I think 407 is right)
>         showAuthDialogAndSetCredentials(theRealm, isNTLM,...);
>         // Lets give them unlimited authorization attempts
>         count = 0;
>     } else if (response == 404) {
>         // Aw shucks, we're out of luck.
>     } else if (...) {
>         // redirect ?
>         // Server too busy, try again later
>     }
> }
>
> That's the basic idea anyway.  I thought everyone used that pattern with
> HttpClient anyway?
>
> Regards,
>
> Adrian Sutton.
>
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