get_url and preemptive authentication?

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hello,

we provide user specific settings for our Maven repository via a HTTP
GET request[1], but have the usecase that "anonymous" has read-only
access, so authentication is not strictly enforced.

I try to setup our CI system with ansible coming from a shell based
setup, where I have:

curl --netrc -o ~/.m2/settings.xml http://repo/path/settings.xml

Now, curl sends the basic auth header in any case, while get_url[2]
waits for a 401 to come back before offering credentials. So with
get_url the credentials are not used but the settings.xml for
anonymous are downloaded.

I could implement a PR with an option to send authentication
preemptively and default to the current behavior.

On the other hand I think anyone using get_url with url_password knows
that authentication is needed, so IMO sending the auth-header directly
by default would be more useful and the current behavior only produces
the overhead of additional requests.

Regards Mirko
[1] we use Artifactory templating here.
[2] inspecting ansible/module_utils/urls.py

2

You might be interested in https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules-core/pull/153

3

Hello Matt,

thanks, any chances that this will make it into version 1.8?
Regards Mirko

4

1.8 is releasing soon so this is unlikely.

It is prioritized p3 so it’s next in line though.

You can use your own version of get_url by dropping in “./library” relative to your playbook, which would allow you to use this today.

5

Thanks, good to know :slight_smile:

Regards
Mirko