How to send authenticated requests to Google Reader?

Question

It seems that Google has disabled the old way of sending cookie SID to their Google Data Services, specifically Google Reader.

This way does not work at least for me:

//create request
NSString* content = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"accountType=HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE&Email=%@&Passwd=%@&service=ah&source=myapp", [loginView username].text, [loginView password].text];
NSURL* authUrl = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin"];
NSMutableURLRequest* authRequest = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:authUrl];
[authRequest setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[authRequest setValue:@"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Content-type"];
[authRequest setHTTPBody:[content dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

NSHTTPURLResponse* authResponse;
NSError* authError;
NSData * authData = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:authRequest returningResponse:&authResponse error:&authError];      

NSString *authResponseBody = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:authData encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

//loop through response body which is key=value pairs, seperated by \n. The code below is not optimal and certainly error prone. 
NSArray *lines = [authResponseBody componentsSeparatedByString:@"\n"];
NSMutableDictionary* token = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
for (NSString* s in lines) {
        NSArray* kvpair = [s componentsSeparatedByString:@"="];
        if ([kvpair count]>1)
                [token setObject:[kvpair objectAtIndex:1] forKey:[kvpair objectAtIndex:0]];
}

//if google returned an error in the body [google returns Error=Bad Authentication in the body. which is weird, not sure if they use status codes]
if ([token objectForKey:@"Error"]) {
        //handle error
};

And the request:

TTURLRequest *request = [TTURLRequest requestWithURL:url delegate:self];
request.cachePolicy = cachePolicy;
request.cacheExpirationAge = TT_CACHE_EXPIRATION_AGE_NEVER;

NSString *cookieHeader = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Name=SID;SID=%@;Domain=.google.com;Path=/;Expires=160000000000", sid];
[request setValue:cookieHeader forHTTPHeaderField:@"Cookie"];

[request setHttpMethod:@"GET"];
[request setValue:@"myapp" forHTTPHeaderField:@"User-agent"];

Changing to use the GoogleLogin auth=xxx gives me a NSURLErrorDomain 401

TTURLRequest *request = [TTURLRequest requestWithURL:url delegate:self];
request.cachePolicy = cachePolicy;
request.cacheExpirationAge = TT_CACHE_EXPIRATION_AGE_NEVER;

NSString *authorizationHeader = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"GoogleLogin auth=%@", auth];
[request setValue:authorizationHeader forHTTPHeaderField:@"Authorization"];

[request setHttpMethod:@"GET"];
[request setValue:@"myapp" forHTTPHeaderField:@"User-agent"];

The result is always the 401 error code. Could someone show me how to fix in this specific case? Thank you in advance.

    Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=401 "Operation could not be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error 401.)" 
    Error description: Operation could not be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error 401.)

Answer 1

Changing the body of the POST solves the 401 error. Differences are in the service, source & continue.

    NSString* content = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Email=%@&Passwd=%@&service=reader&source=yourapp&continue=http://www.google.com", username, password];