1. Introduction

This library provides classes to help with using urllib2 to access a shibboleth protected URL.

1.1. shib-login

This commandline tool was designed to dump cookies from the CookieJar after successfully accessing an SP. These cookies can then be used by other tools like wget of curl to access the same shibboleth protected URL.

$ shib-login -i VPAC https://slcs1.arcs.org.au/SLCS/login
Username [russell]:
Password:
Successfully authenticated to https://slcs1.arcs.org.au/SLCS/login
$ cat ~/.shibboleth/cookies.txt
# Yummy shibboleth cookies
slcs1.arcs.org.au       FALSE   /       FALSE   1250598932
_shibsession_64656561756c7468747470766a2f2f736c6373312e617263732e6f72672e61752f73686962626f6c657468
   _186abd265ea87bf980fae2a16b0243e2


$ curl -b ~/.shibboleth/cookies.txt https://slcs1.arcs.org.au/SLCS/login
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<SLCSLoginResponse>
......

$ wget --load-cookies ~/.shibboleth/cookies.txt https://slcs1.arcs.org.au/SLCS/login
--2009-08-18 14:35:53--  https://slcs1.arcs.org.au/SLCS/login
Resolving slcs1.arcs.org.au... 202.158.218.211
Connecting to slcs1.arcs.org.au|202.158.218.211|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
.......