HTTPD::Authen 1.66

HTTPD::Authen is a HTTP server authentication class.

SYNOPSIS

use HTTPD::Authen ();

This module provides methods for authenticating a user. It uses HTTPD::UserAdmin to lookup passwords in a database. Subclasses provide methods specific to the authentication mechanism.

Currently, under HTTP/1.0 the only supported authentication mechanism is Basic Authentication. NCSA Mosaic and NCSA HTTPd understand the proposed Message Digest Authentication, which should make it into the HTTP spec someday. This module supports both.

METHODS

new ()

Since HTTPD::Authen uses HTTPD::UserAdmin for database lookups it needs many of the same attributes. Or, if the first argument passed to the new() object constructor is a reference to an HTTPD::UserAdmin, the attributes are inherited.

The following attributes are recognized from HTTPD::UserAdmin:

DBType, DB, Server, Path, DBMF, Encrypt
And if you wish to query an SQL server: Host, User, Auth, Driver, UserTable, NameField, PasswordField
The same defaults are assumed for these attributes, as in HTTPD::UserAdmin. See HTTPD::UserAdmin for details.

$authen = new HTTPD::Authen (DB => "www-users");

basic()

Short-cut to return an HTTPD::Authen::Basic object.

$basic = $authen->basic;

digest()

Short-cut to return an HTTPD::Authen::Digest object.

$digest = $authen->digest;

type($authorization_header_value)

This method will guess the authorization scheme based on the Authorization header value, and return an object bless into that schemes class.

By using this method, it is simple to authenticate a user without even knowing what scheme is being used:

$authtype = HTTPD::Authen->type($authinfo);
@info = $authtype->parse($authinfo)
if( $authtype->check(@info) ) {
#response 200 OK, etc.
}