Kevin,

> What is this Birkin hack of which you speak? I've been wondering how  
> all these recent pieces are getting tied back to the main code4lib  
> site...


For the login for <library.brown.edu/code4libcon09/proposals/>, I came  
up with some python code (for the django app) that takes a submitted  
username and password and posts them to the code4lib.org site, and,  
based on the response, determines whether the login was successful.  
Ross used a version of it for his voting site. Obviously a direct API  
would be better, but in the absence of one, this does the trick.

<http://dl.lib.brown.edu/its/software/code4lib/remote_auth.py>

It's a little counter-intuitive, but correct (analyzing http-traffic  
helped).

Of course, code4lib.org must never, ever change its login method.   ;)

(At least not until after the conference!!)

I got in the habit of doing this kind of thing in order to create mini- 
APIs for vendor products that don't have APIs but have websites. Hope  
this is useful to others, given its fragility.

(By the way, I didn't actually get this email, someone let me know  
about it -- anyone else sporadically getting code4lib emails?)

-b

---
Birkin James Diana
Programmer, Integrated Technology Services
Brown University Library
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