HTTP Server - Password protection

Earlier we introduced an open source embedded HTTP server. The framework comes with some very simple sample code to run it. This post will show how to extend the server to add suppport for password protection.

Say we want to specifically protect the "private" directory. We simply subclass the HTTPConnection class, and replace the "isPasswordProtected" and "passwordForUser" methods as follows:

@implementation MyHTTPConnection

- (BOOL)isPasswordProtected:(NSString *)path
{
  if([path hasPrefix:@"/private"])
    return YES;
  else
    return NO;
}

- (NSString *)passwordForUser:(NSString *)username
{
  return @"password";
}

@end

Then we simply instruct the HTTPServer to use our subclassed connection class:

[httpServer setConnectionClass:[MyHTTPConnection class]];

And that's all there is to it. Now you can browse your Sites directory as normal, except your ~/Sites/private directory will be password protected.

Download it here.

There's a lot more that can be done with the server, such as serving up custom dynamic content, TLS encryption, etc.