[twill] add_auth

[John J Lee]

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Titus Brown wrote:
[...]
> Here's the code from twill:
>
>    creds = urllib2.HTTPPasswordMgr()
>    creds.add_password(realm, uri, user, passwd)
>    mechanize_browser.set_password_manager(creds)
>
> Should that work?
>

No!

1. Never use urllib2:

(search for the word 'IMPORTANT' ;-)

http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/

or, since SF seems a bit dodgy today:

http://codespeak.net/svn/wwwsearch/mechanize/trunk/README.html.in


To be explicit, here's the relevant bit:

The classes and functions exported by mechanize in its public interface 
that come straight from urllib2 (e.g. FTPHandler, at the time of writing) 
do work with mechanize (duh ;-).  Exactly which of these classes and 
functions come straight from urllib2 without extension or modification 
will change over time, though, so don't rely on it; instead, just import 
everything you need from mechanize, never from urllib2, which is 
explicitly OK (though not well tested ATM), subject to the other 
restrictions in the list above.


(um, what the above paragraph means is: always use mechanize.Blah, not 
urllib2.Blah :-)


2. Use browser.add_password() and .add_proxy_password(), not 
.set_password_manager().  You don't need to make an HTTPPasswordManager 
yourself any more.


If you do that, you'll get the fixes I made in 2.5 and backported to 
mechanize.


John