Passing userid/password as part of web address?

[philg]

Is it possible to pass a required userid and/or password on an internet address somehow?

I am trying to automate surfing to a particular web page, but I need to supply a userid/password as well - I'd like to avoid the prompt box if possible

Is this possible??

Thanks

[rojash]

Whether or not it is possible, and exactly what you would need to pass will depend entirely on how the site has been coded. Try doing it manually and then reading the contents of the address bar.

[philg]

Sorry I wasn't clear

When I surf to the web address, I am prompted for a userid and password - I'd like to provide the userid and password as part of the web address(?) to avoid the prompt

I know you can do this with ftp, I just wasn't sure about http

[rojash]

You were perfectly clear - perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my answer. There are many ways in which a web site can deal with logging in users. They can use Java, ASP, PHP and so on. What's more the web master might refer to the UserID by any one of a number of names, and the same applies to the password. For the web site to deal automatically with an address which includes login information, it will need to have been programmed with a mechanism for dealing with such a request. This may or may not have been done, and if it has been done, the syntax of the request and the parameter references will depend on the way in which that mechanism has been programmed. Without knowing these specifics, you can only do it by trial and error, or by contacting the webmaster, or, in some cases by logging in manually, you will be able to see the essence of the request reflected in you address bar. In this latter case, you can then use that information to recreate the required URL.

[philg]

Ah OK

I was hoping for a standard mechanism

I'll treat this as a "no"

Thanks for your help

[OBonio]

You can enter user details in a URL by using :

http://userid:[email protected]/

This only works if the prompt you get is a form of authentication required to access the site like a company intranet.

HTH

[OBonio]

Apparently this isn't supported in IE anymore due to phishing techniques used to exploit spoofed URLs.

Works in Firefox though.