Pass credentials in an other way

[BernardWielfaer]

I have an Excel macro doing a web query executing a Windchill report. The purpose is to download the dxf file attached to the drawing in an automated way. The problem is that Windchill does prompt the first time for credentials (login name and password). Is there a other way to give the credentials to Windchill ?

Your answers are welcome. Regards,
Bernard

[ptc-5248447]

I'm not sure how you are making a call to Windchill.

But if you are making a call to Windchill and making use of Remote Method Server, then you can use the following to set the username and password. This way you won't get a login prompt.

RemoteMethodServer.getDefault().setUserName(username);

RemoteMethodServer.getDefault().setPassword(password);

wt.load.LoadFromFile uses the same mechanism as above in lines 162-165.

Hope that helps!

[BernardWielfaer]

I am calling Windchill by passing the url of the report to execute in the web query function of Excel. Maybe there is a way in passing the credentials with the url, like http://user:password@windchill.lvd.be/Windchill. This seems to only work with Chrome or Mozilla. I am working with Internet Explorer.

[jessh]

You really want to embed the sensitive credentials into an Excel document?

Isn't this a rather huge security hole?

Any means of passing or embedding credentials here would be a security hole.

If you're saying that the DXF in question is "free game" to anyone who
might possibly illicitly get their hands on this Excel document, then
you could do something silly like create an anonymously accessible JSP
that forwarded to the download URL, e.g. after verifying some (less than
secure) pass-phrase or some such. If you could figure out how to get
Excel to do so, you could set this up using a client certificate
instead, but again anyone who got a hold of the client certificate would
have access to whatever the certificate gives access to.

If the web server is allowing for NTLM (or more broadly Microsoft
Integrated Authentication / SPNEGO), e.g. by installing IIS or a
commercial Apache plug-in for this purpose (I've not found any free one
that fully works), then Windows could authenticate for you without you
entering anything.

--
Jess Holle