Basic Authentication With XMLHTTPRequest

Question

Hi,

I am attempting to use XMLHTTPRequest to get an update on twitter.

var XMLReq = new XMLHttpRequest();
XMLReq.open("GET", "http://twitter.com/account/verify_credentials.json", false, "TestAct", "password");
XMLReq.send(null);

However, using my sniffer I cannot see any authorization headers being passed through. Hence, I get a 401 error response from Twitter.

The account and password are correctly entered.

Anyone attempt this? Can anyone give me some pointers? Thank you.

Answer 1

Use a server-side proxy

Answer 2

Due to the Origin policy, you cannot make a XMLHttpRequest from your domain to another domain. E.g. you cannot use http://twitter.com/... URLs unless your script was loaded from twitter.com. If your script is loaded from http://localhost/, the AJAX request also need to go to localhost.