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HTTP/2 200 content-location: feed_auth.html.gzip vary: negotiate,accept-encoding tcn: choice last-modified: Sat, 12 Jul 2025 08:31:39 GMT etag: "c43-639b74163df18;6360543034e46 content-length: 3139 cache-control: max-age=10800 strict-transport-security: max-age=15552000 content-security-policy: default-src 'self'; img-src 'self' data: *.twitter.com *.twimg.com; style-src 'self' *.twitter.com; script-src 'self' *.twitter.com *.twimg.com; frame-src data: *.twitter.com www.youtube.com; frame-ancestors 'none'; report-uri https://mnot.report-uri.com/r/d/csp/enforce link: ; rel=preload;as=font;type=font/woff2;crossorigin=anonymous;nopush, ; rel=preload;as=fetch;crossorigin=anonymous;nopush link: ; rel=preload;as=font;type=font/woff2;crossorigin=anonymous;nopush content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 content-encoding: gzip content-language: en date: Sat, 11 Oct 2025 07:55:08 GMT server: Apache Friday Fun: Feed Authentication with Cookies

mark nottingham

Friday Fun: Feed Authentication with Cookies

Friday, 9 June 2006

Web Feeds

See if your aggregator can subscribe to this feed (username/password: test/test) and post the results in comments.

While you’re there, it would be interesting to know what happens if you shut down / log out of your aggregator, get back in, and then refresh.

22 Comments

Edward O'Connor said:

Nor for Bloglines (big surprise there).

Friday, June 9 2006 at 1:28 AM

Dominic Mitchell said:

NetNewsWire 2.1 (from Safari) appears to handle it fine…

Friday, June 9 2006 at 1:29 AM

Dare Obasanjo said:

Works fine in RSS Bandit.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 3:24 AM

Bob Haugen said:

NewsGator Online says “Error: Subscription could not be added. Please check the URL and try again.”

Friday, June 9 2006 at 5:51 AM

Rick Allard said:

NetNewsWire Lite (2.1b37) twitches, and doesn’t succeed.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 8:42 AM

Carlos Maltzahn said:

Squeet doesn’t handle it.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 11:38 AM

Alisdair McDiarmid said:

I’m using NewsFire 1.3, and it works fine. It stores the authentication parameters somewhere, so a quit-restart cycle works fine; I don’t have to type the username and password again.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 12:05 PM

Jake said:

Doesn’t import into Google Lens.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 12:19 PM

ghc said:

Google Reader can’t get to the feed via the “add a feed” function, so no dice.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 12:22 PM

James Snell said:

Liferea is a no go. Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 handles it fine; prompts the user for re-auth on app restart.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 12:55 PM

Mark Baker said:

No go for Rojo.

Friday, June 9 2006 at 12:58 PM

Dominic Mitchell said:

Hmmm, in retrospect, NetNewsWire 2.1 did prompt me for the password again when I rebooted, which is a little odd.

Saturday, June 10 2006 at 2:17 AM

Chris Ferris said:

SharpReader:

Error reading URL: Too many redirects Please try to validate this feed. If this feed validates as correct RSS, you can send an error report.

Saturday, June 10 2006 at 5:11 AM

Ian Davis said:

GreatNews subscribes fine. When I refresh it pops up auth dialog again but I saved the password so it’s already pre-filled. Do need to click OK though.

Saturday, June 10 2006 at 7:03 AM

YAMAMOTO Yohei said:

Livedoor Reader (https://reader.livedoor.com; the most geeky aggregator in Japan) doesn’t work.

Sunday, June 11 2006 at 6:08 AM

Javier Ruere said:

Akregator 1.2.2 can initially download the feed but does not prompt for a password after restart which was unexpected since I didn’t tell it to store the password.

Sunday, June 11 2006 at 9:51 AM

Andrew Hallam said:

FeedDemon 2.0.0.24 asked for username/password but displayed no entries. After a restart and feed refresh of the feed it did not ask for username/password, but still no entries.

Also, the feed name was “mnot’s Web log - TEST”.

Monday, June 12 2006 at 2:59 AM

Pete Lacey said:

Mark,

I’m not sure what your goal is, but you may want to coordinate with Dave Megginson. He ran the same tests on his blog a few months ago.

https://www.megginson.com/blogs/quoderat/archives/2005/07/29/password-protected-rss-challenge/ https://www.megginson.com/blogs/quoderat/archives/2005/08/20/ssltls-rss-challenge/

Pete

Tuesday, June 13 2006 at 5:53 AM

Mark Nottingham said:

Pete,

Thanks for the links!

I’m testing something different here; it redirects requests for the feed that don’t contain a cookie to another resource which, after authentication, gives the aggregator the cookie and redirects it back to the feed.

Tuesday, June 13 2006 at 8:39 AM

Taka said:

Awasu handles the feed fine, even after restarting.

Wednesday, June 14 2006 at 2:59 AM

Javier Ruere said:

Akregator works OK. Asked for username and password, got the feed and a day later it asked for the password again.

Wednesday, June 14 2006 at 5:30 AM

Matt Patterson said:

Hrm.

Interesting results in NetNewsWire 2.1

I first clicked the link from one of NNW’s browser windows. This took me through the authentication step (saved in keychain), and then to the feed, but in the browser (rather than subscribing): a nice page of the text content of the atom doc.

I then tried context-clicking and subscribed to the link directly. It asked for the username password, but it looks like there’s now an infinite redirect going on.

So, no dice from NNW for me.

Wednesday, June 21 2006 at 6:23 AM

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