Can NetTalk Client do HTTP Digest Authentication?

[bekeland]

I have a need to access a device that uses HTTP Digest Authentication.  It is a network camera.  My normal tool for this is Catalyst Socket Tools but they don't support this in any flavor of their stuff.  So looking for alternatives and thought maybe NetTalk might be able to do this.  Is that a possibility or anyone know of a TCP/HTTP tool that can do this?  Thanks much.

Brian Ekeland

[Bruce]

Hi Brian,

I think some folks have done Digest Authentication using NetTalk - but I'm not sure of the status of it in NetTalk itself. I'll have to ask Sean in the morning - I'll keep you posted.

Cheers
Bruce

[seancameron]

Hi Brian,

At the moment this is is not built in, although I have a digest auth class that will be added to NetTalk to provide digest based authentication for the NetWebClient (HTTP) class (and all other classes for that matter).

Regards,

Sean Cameron
www.capesoft.com

[bekeland]

Sean,

That would be great.  Do you have a feel for when this would be ready?

Brian

[Alan Telford]

ON a similar question, do you have any code for NTLM authentication?
Even if it's not integrated, I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

Thanks
Alan

[bvileen]

Is there any documentation on HTTP Digest Authentication for NT5? I see that Bruce has mentioned that it is available in a couple other posts.

Thanks
Brian V.

[seancameron]

The docs are currently missing the Digest Based auth, however the code is in the demo. NetTalk provides a method that creates the authorization for you:

      ThisWebClient.Authorization = ThisWebClient.CreateAuthorizationString (Username, Password, AuthenticationType)
      ThisWebClient.ProxyAuthorization = ThisWebClient.CreateAuthorizationString (ProxyUsername, ProxyPassword, ProxyAuthenticationType)

The AuthenticationType parameters is set to Net:WebBasicAuthentication (0) for Basic or Net:WebDigestAuthentication (1) for Digest based auth. See the TestWebClient procedure in the NetTalk Demo example.

In terms of NTLM it is not supported and is unlikely to ever be. It is an undocumented, proprietary protocol. It is only used by Microsoft and is intended for authentication between Microsoft Products. There are a few open source project attempting to built NTLM compatible libraries, although it is something of a moving target.

[Bruce]

I recently changed the user-agent string in the web client, so the web client no longer identifies itself as IE. That should make NTLM authentication unnecessary -it will probably accept Digest.

Cheers
Bruce