[Genome] url to password protected track file

[Galt Barber]

I should add that this can work on systems that support it
for ftp and other protocols as well.

We don't support https at this time.
Therefore you can't use it in places
like the hgt.customText variable.

Security note:
With http and ftp, you should be aware of the
security issues.  The username and password given
on the URL would be potentially visible to anyone capable
of snooping on the tcp connection.  Note, however,
that if the https secure protocol were involved,
nobody could snoop the user/password.

-Galt


On Wed, 2 Apr 2008, Galt Barber wrote:

>
> The syntax for URLs that pass the username and password is this:
>  http://user:password@server.com/path/file?options
>
> but the additional trick here is that this url is inside
> the main url (it's just the value of hgt.customText)
> therefore you need to also escape that url.
>
> Here is a link on the url escape mechanism:
>  http://www.december.com/html/spec/esccodes.html
> and you can write your own little routine for escaping,
> or probably there is one in the code libraries
> available to you.
>
> Ah, here's a free online URL-encoder that
> you could use manually:
>  http://www.motobit.com/util/url-encoder.asp
>
> -Galt
>
>
> On Wed, 2 Apr 2008, Ashish Agarwal wrote:
>
> > Hi. I am trying to construct a url that references files on our password
> > protected server. For example:
> >
> > http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?db=ce4&position=chrI&hgt.customText=http://myserver.org/file.wig
> >
> > However, myserver.org requires a password and an "Authorization Required"
> > message is displayed on the top the genome browser page. In the list
> > archives, I found a message stating that the format
> >
> >    protocol://user:password at server.com/somepath
> >
> > can be used, but I cannot get this to work. What exactly is the syntax? I
> > tried providing "protocol://user:password at myserver.org/file.wig" as the
> > value for hgt.customText but that does not work. Without the quotes, I get
> > an "Unrecognized format" error. With the quotes, no error message is
> > displayed but neither is the track.
> >
> > Thank you in advance for any help.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Genome maillist  -  Genome at soe.ucsc.edu
> > http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Genome maillist  -  Genome at soe.ucsc.edu
> http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
>