Timwi timwi@gmx.net writes:
It is not possible in general to authenticate an RSS feed. Of course Wikipedia could require a cookie or a HTTP Auth before it will show you the RSS feed, but that makes it pretty much useless because most RSS readers don't support this. In particular, a lot of RSS readers -- such as LiveJournal -- handle RSS feeds as a fundamentally public resource and cannot allow any authentication to be sent with it.
I'm currently thinking about the same problem for a personal Web site. The approach I'll probably choose is some hash in the URL. For example a hash of the User name and the Password hash. The "XML" or "Syndicate" or whatever-button will then link to the rss.php?user=user&id=HASH page. There I can easily check if the HASH is correct for the specified user.
Every RSS reader I have used so far supported query strings.
Regards Patrice