[wwwsearch-general] Re: Urllib2 / add_password method

[John J Lee]

On Sat, 29 Apr 2006, John J. Lee wrote:

> "mrstephengross" <mrstephengross at hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> I'm working on learning how to use urllib2 to use a proxy server. I've
>> looked through the postings on this group, and it's been helpful. I
>> have not, however, found complete documentation on the add_password()
>> functions. Here's what I've got so far:
>
> Don't use a password manager with proxy auth in 2.4, it doesn't work:
>
> http://python.org/sf/1470846
>
> [...]
>> It works, but I don't really know what I'm doing with the
>> proxy_auth_handler part. Specifying username and password make sense,
>> but I haven't found documentation on what 'realm' and 'host' are for.
>> Shouldn't username & password be sufficient?

Oops, didn't read your question.

I'm surprised if it worked at all given that bug (maybe you're using an 
older Python, and I forget all the details of the bug).

Anyway, to answer your question: yes, username & password *should* be 
sufficient, but the password manager classes in urllib2 at present aren't 
very friendly like that.  You can use HTTPPasswordMgrWithDefaultRealm so 
that at least you can forget about the realm part.  (The "realm" is what 
you see in the title bar of the pop-up that web browsers display.  See RFC 
2617 for more details.)

I'm adding friendlier proxy/auth support to package mechanize ATM (and 
finding/fixing bugs as I go), so maybe some of that will find its way into 
Python 2.6.


John