Previous  Up  Next

Module Authbasic


module Authbasic: sig .. end
Module Authbasic: Basic HTTP Authentication.

This module implements Basic HTTP Authentication as described in RFC 2617. It can be used to add an authentication layer to sites with no built-in authentication (e.g. static files). Beware, passwords are transmitted in cleartext with this scheme, so the medium should be secured somehow (by e.g. SSL).

This module implements only the HTTP-related part of the protocol, and is meant to be extended with various authentication schemes. A very naive one (authentication with a single user/password, given in the configuration file) is provided.

val register_basic_authentication_method : (Simplexmlparser.xml -> string -> string -> bool Lwt.t) -> unit
This function registers an authentication plugin: it adds a new parser to the list of available authentication schemes.

A parser takes as argument an XML tree (corresponding to the first son of an <authbasic> element in the configuration file) and returns an authentication function f. f will be called for each request with the supplied user and password and should return (cooperatively) a boolean telling whether access is granted or not. Exceptions are handled the same way as for extension parsers.

The <authbasic> element must have a realm attribute, giving some identifier to the resource which is protected (several resources on the same hostname can share the same realm). This gives a general customization scheme "for free" from the point of view of plugin developers and is totally transparent to the plugin.

val get_basic_authentication_method : Simplexmlparser.xml -> string -> string -> bool Lwt.t
This function combines all the parsers registered with register_basic_authentication_method. It might be useful for other extensions. Not for the casual user.