I've got a site which requires a user login/password. The way this is implemented is quite complex and involves tokens stored in cookies. The webserver is configured to redirect any user who doesn't present a token to the login page and denies them access to the site.
My main problem is with RSS feeds. I can't use RSS on this site, as any RSS reader will attempt to fetch the url and then be redirected to the login page. The reader will then report an error because it's not received valid xml. My current solution is to encrypt a parameter in the url (like the section id) and make that available without user login. It's still a shoddy security-through-obscurity method, and there doesn't seem to be anything better.
Does RSS handle authentication in any way? Are there any readers out there which handle feeds which require authentication?
My main problem is with RSS feeds. I can't use RSS on this site, as any RSS reader will attempt to fetch the url and then be redirected to the login page. The reader will then report an error because it's not received valid xml. My current solution is to encrypt a parameter in the url (like the section id) and make that available without user login. It's still a shoddy security-through-obscurity method, and there doesn't seem to be anything better.
Does RSS handle authentication in any way? Are there any readers out there which handle feeds which require authentication?