[Tutor] urllib2_realm??

[Kent Johnson]

govind goyal wrote:
>  
> Hi,
>  
> Use of Basic HTTP Authentication:
> 
> import urllib2
> auth_handler.add_password(*'realm'*, 'host', 'username', 'password')
> 
> What is realm and its use in above line of code?

Realm is set by the host. It is usually displayed in the login dialog in 
a browser, it will look like a site name.

The realm is in the headers received back from the server. For example:
$ curl -I http://xxx.com/
HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:39:47 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) mod_python/3.2.8 Python/2.4.4
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="xxxx"
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent

> 
> If I want to access a web page and I don't know what the realm is,then what should I write in place of realm?

I think you can instantiate the HTTPBasicAuthHandler with an instance of 
HTTPPasswordMgrWithDefaultRealm. Then pass None as the realm and it will 
be used as the default.

Kent