Calibre Content Server HTTP Authentication - Basic or Digest?

[Jim Chapman]

Hi,

I'm in the closing stages of building the Windows Phone 7 version of my book reader (Freda), and I'm just working on the Calibre Content Server integration.

It works fine if I don't set a password on the Content Server, but if I do set a password, it does not work. My code is doing the right thing, supplying a credentials object as required ... but I think the problem is the type of authentication. At the moment the Windows Phone 7 development tools only support 'Basic' HTTP Authentication; I wonder if perhaps the content server is insisting on 'Digest' HTTP Authentication. That is a feature that Microsoft, in their wisdom, have not (yet) provided on WP7.

Can someone familiar with the code tell me:
- Does the content server insist on Digest authentication and refuse to use Basic authentication? (by the way, I think this would be a reasonable thing to do; it is Microsoft who are being daft)
- Or is there some setting I can use to make the content server use Basic authentication?
- Or is my suspicion wrong? (which is to say that my problems are caused by something else, and I have more debugging to do)

By the way, I noticed some comments about authentication problems with Android software. I wonder whether this is a similar problem.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Jim

[kovidgoyal]

It uses Digest, basic is way too insecure.

[chaley]

It could offer basic, with the strong hint that people who use it should connect through stunnel.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by chaley

It could offer basic, with the strong hint that people who use it should connect through stunnel.

If the W7 browser doesn't support digest auth, what are the chances it will support https?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If the W7 browser doesn't support digest auth, what are the chances it will support https?

https works fine on both my WinMo 6.5 browsers (IE and Opera). I also remember it working on WinMo 6.0. Don't remember all the way back to WinMo 5.

It is hard to believe that WinMo 7 would break something that already works, but stranger things have happened.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by chaley

https works fine on both my WinMo 6.5 browsers (IE and Opera). I also remember it working on WinMo 6.0. Don't remember all the way back to WinMo 5.

It is hard to believe that WinMo 7 would break something that already works, but stranger things have happened.

They have broken it (WP7 is by design incompatible with everything that came before). They will presumably fix it in a patch release, quite soon.

In the mean time, Freda for WP7 will only work for browsing your Calibre catalog if you have no password set.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If the W7 browser doesn't support digest auth, what are the chances it will support https?

Oddly enough, it does support https, at least according to the documentation.

As for the Digest Authentication point: I have found a recipe for how to 'roll your own' on WP7. So if Microsoft don't get round to implementing the API soon, I do apparently have a 'Plan B'.