RESTful Authentication

Question

What does RESTful Authentication mean and how does it work? I can\'t find a good overview on Google. My only understanding is that you pass the session key (remeberal) in

Answer 1

The 'very insightful' article mentioned by @skrebel ( http://www.berenddeboer.net/rest/authentication.html ) discusses a convoluted but really broken method of authentication.

You may try to visit the page (which is supposed to be viewable only to authenticated user) http://www.berenddeboer.net/rest/site/authenticated.html without any login credentials.

(Sorry I can't comment on the answer.)

I would say REST and authentication simply do not mix. REST means stateless but 'authenticated' is a state. You cannot have them both at the same layer. If you are a RESTful advocate and frown upon states, then you have to go with HTTPS (i.e. leave the security issue to another layer).