How about Marius' suggestion to use a 200 response? I'd rather not invent a new auth scheme that is used just to comply with HTTP requirements for a 401... I think we either keep this simple(r) by using a 400 or 200, or take another look at James' proposal for using Basic auth to send the client credentials. At that point a 401 will be used when the client credentials are wrong, and a 400 (or 200) when something else doesn't match in the request (verification code, username/password).
Can others voice their support/dislike for the various options? EHL > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Sayre [mailto:say...@gmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 9:31 AM > To: Eran Hammer-Lahav > Cc: oauth@ietf.org > Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] misuse of status code: 400 Bad Request > > On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Eran Hammer-Lahav > <e...@hueniverse.com> wrote: > > We tried something like this approach before but the group consensus was > that we should only have a single spec for now. > > Eran kindly pointed me at this survey: > http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/oauth/current/msg01214.html > > It doesn't look like very strong consensus to me, but I can see how the desire > of everyone to call their thing "OAuth" can be a powerful motivator. :) > > > As for using Basic/Digest for flow authentication, that's a proposal made by > James Manger which so far received little support (though no hard > objections). > > > > I don't have a strong preference either way. > > > > Well, regardless of how big the spec gets, this bit from 3.6.1.1. is a bug: > > HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request > Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded > > error=incorrect_credentials > > If you imagine a client trying to do something special with OAuth errors, > there's nothing about this response that's self describing. > Something like this layers much better: > > HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized > WWW-Authenticate: OAuthDelegatation > Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded > > error=incorrect_credentials > > On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 12:16 PM, Marius Scurtescu > <mscurte...@google.com> wrote: > > > > At first 401 may seem like the perfect status code in this case, but > > because there is no real challenge response, it probably is a bad > > choice. > > > > There certainly is, it just isn't an Authorization header. A client receiving > error=incorrect_credentials would change the creds and respond, right? > > > > > Some HTTP libraries will try to automatically respond to a 401 > > challenge and if they are not configured to do so will generate noise > > in the log files. I have seen Apache HttpClient doing that. > > People will write buggy OAuth clients too. Don't design around lame bugs in > Apache HttpClient. :) > > -- > > Robert Sayre > > "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." _______________________________________________ OAuth mailing list OAuth@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/oauth