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Package uk.ac.starlink.auth

Manages authentication for HTTP(S) resources in accordance with VO standards.

See: Description

Package uk.ac.starlink.auth Description

Manages authentication for HTTP(S) resources in accordance with VO standards.

The main user-visible class of this package is AuthManager. In general there is one user-visible instance of this class, obtained from AuthManager.getInstance(), and its openStream method can be used as a drop-in replacement for URL.openStream(); other methods are available for more nuanced HTTP interactions. If this is done, when a resource is encountered which issues a 401 or 403 challenge of a recognised type, the user will be queried for credentials, which are used to acquire the resource in question, and also for subsequent resources from the same domain, so that multiple logins to the same domain are not required.

Some details about the above outline:

This package relies on VO standards that are still under discussion. The behaviour and user interface may change in future releases, and at time of writing not all data services that require or offer authentication advertise it in a way that AUTH can work with. It is hoped that authentication interoperability will improve in future versions of this library and of server-side software.

This package has no external dependencies, and may, depending on user demand, be released in future as a standalone package.

Since:
31 Oct 2023
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