Is it possible to use authentication in RSS feeds

Question

I'm trying to develop a feed for an intranet document management system, so that staff can be notified of new documents. I have actually completed coding it, but there is no way to authenticate the user.

Also I'm not successful in adding the feed to news readers, but works with firefox Live Bookmark.

Any Ideas

Update:

Since I couldn't explain really well, I'll be specific I want it to work inside OutLook RSS Feeds.

Thanks

Answer 1

Well it's not very common, but i read an article about it a while ago

http://labs.silverorange.com/archive/2003/july/privaterss

that might help you out

Answer 2

The feed reader has to be able to access the URL of the feed, so if it is only available to people on your network, Google Reader (for example) won't be able to resolve the address and find the feed.

Answer 3

Outlook 2007 onwards can subscribe to authenticated feeds as a workaround. That's not ideal but it's possible.

At your PHP end, you just need to use some basic HTTP auth.

Answer 4

There are so many feed readers and the authentication techniques are so hit-and-miss that I think traditional auth might be a blocking issue.

This is for an intranet, right? Do you use static IPs?

Perhaps having a authentication page (where they log in using their company credentials) and from then on they can access their RSS feed from that IP. If they move to another IP, they just need to re-auth.

You could even send the auth messages through the RSS feed.

Pain in the arse if the IPs move around lots, but a possible option.

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Failing that, enforcing which readers can be used. NewsGator supports full authentication so would certainly be the simplest method.

Answer 5

Why not create an auth token for that particular user, so that the token/feed id combination will auth the user?

Answer 6

You may try HTTP authentication (either basic or digest).

As for newsreaders, please clarify what are you doing and what's going wrong.