Question about web sites that require usernames and passwords...

[William Oldfield]

I believe a solution might lie with the use of "expect".  It is an
extension of tcl.  You can create a script in expect that will make the
connection and then pass the session back to the intiating program.

The site at the URL below has may prepared scripts for connecting to a
variety of sites.  Select the automated link and you will get a copy of
one.

"       http://netlink.wlu.edu:1020/8/ty_or_T/ty_-sa_-ln1"

***Just what you wanted - Another programming language to learn :-)  ***


>On the technical side of this issue, I've been struggling with the problem of
>hiding usernames and passwords from users who are trying to connect to a
>database through a telnet or rlogin URL and haven't had much luck.  Several
>variant URL forms which will purportedly accomplish an automatic login were
>tried, but in all cases they 1) didn't work and 2) didn't keep the username and
>password secure.  Moreover, a lot of telnet servers won't accept passwords as
>command line arguments; they have to be entered once the connection is
>established (that is, lynx or any other Web browser will generally not be able
>to pass them to telnet as arguments or environmental variables).  One solution
>might be to write a script in Kermit that would function as a macro for the
>process, then invoke the script from lynx as a local executable (which lynx can
>be configured to do).
>
>Paul Neff
>Internet Librarian, Kansas City Public Library
>paul at kcpl.lib.mo.us


------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Oldfield (Networked Information Research Associate)
University of Waterloo Library            Phone: (519) 888-4567 Ext. 2461
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1         Email: wroldfie at library.uwaterloo.ca
Homepage: http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/~wroldfie/home.html