Cookies

[Ken Seehof]

Thanks for your reply.

Creating a unique id from a random number is fine.  The problem is that
there seems to be no way to communicate this number to the standalone python
app.  Thanks for the heads up on the IP address non-uniqueness problem.

Here's a restatement of the problem.  It's really about crossing the sandbox
barrier.

Does anyone know of another mailing list more specific to http questions?

1. Client downloads an execuatable (frozen python application).
2. Client downloads a web page.
3. Web page javascript generates a statistically unique random identifier.
4. Web page sends identifier to the server, which uses it as database key.
5. User runs python application
6. *** Python application somehow gets the identifier from somewhere ***
7. Now the python application and the server both have the same identifier.

The only question I am asking is how to do step 6.

Alternative:

1. Client downloads an execuatable (frozen python application).
2. Client downloads a web page.
3. *** Web page javascript makes a unique identifier for the client. ***
4. Web page sends identifier to the server, which uses it as database key.
5. User runs python application
6. *** Python application somehow generates the same identifier ***
7. Now the python application and the server both have the same identifier.

Again the only question I am asking is how to do steps 3 and 6 to get the
same number.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Skott" <martin.skott at propylon.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
To: <python-list at python.org>
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 5:18 AM
Subject: Re: Cookies


> "Ken Seehof" <kens at sightreader.com> writes:
> > Alternate question:
> >
> > Is there a technique common to both javascript and python that will
> > obtain a unique identifier for a computer (e.g. IP address).  It must
> > not be browser specific.
>
> The other guys seems to have answered your first question so I will
> try to answer this.
> You should first of all be aware that there is no common unique
> identifier for a computer available from the net today[1]. IP
> addresses as you suggest aren't useable because of of multiple users
> being placed behind the same firewall/proxy server whos IP all their
> requests originate from. If your application is for an intranet only
> without firewalls or proxy servers then this might be different but
> generally it fits.
> A far better solution is to generate something unique for the user to
> carry around. This is easily done using something like the choice
> function of the python random interface. I know nothing about
> Javascript so how you would come around this thing using it I don't
> know but the fact that using IPs is bad is universal.
>
> [1]Why would somebody use cookies if there was?
> --
> Martin Skott
> Software Developer
> Propylon - Enabling Universal Mobility
> http://www.propylon.com
> Tel: +353 096 37245
> Mobile: +353 087 9680370
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>