[Qgis-user] WMS through https and basic auth

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Jukka,

On Sun, 09. May 2010 at 09:09:28 +0000, Jukka Rahkonen wrote:
> Our WMS server is using http basic authentication and it can only be accessed
> through https.  I triet to use it with QGIs 1.5.0 (from OSGeo4W) but it leads
> only to this error message:
> 
> "Could not understand the response.  The wms provider said:
> Download of capabilities failed: Unknown protocol specified"

Try r13448 or above.  There https requests should work.  Not sure if we need
more support for SSL certificates...

> Next I tried the connection by installing InteProxy on my own computer.  Then
> QGis is communicating fist with InteProxy that is acting like server at
> http://localhost.  This way QGis can read the GetCapabilities from our WMS
> and I can even add a WMS layer on a map.  However, I can see from the WMS
> logs that no requests are coming from QGis.  I suppose this is because QGis
> in not sending GetMap to the Inteproxy address at localhost but to the URL
> advertised in GetCapabilities of our server.  That is like
> https://our.wms_server.fi...  This is naturally correct behaviour according
> to WMS standard, but in case of proxy it does not work.

I would have expected that InteProxy also rewrites the GetCapabilities
response...

> 1. Is QGis 1.5.0 supposed to support https communication on Windows?

Not earlier - but now it should now.  Although I just discovered that the
osgeo4w Qt seems to be build without SSL support.

> 2. When OpenJUMP makes connection to WMS service it is checking first if the
> base URLs for GetCapabilities and GetMap are the same. If they are not, it
> asks the user select which one to use, the same base URL as used for
> GetCapabilities or the one captured from the GetCapabilities document.

Actually QGIS used to ignore the URI from GetCapabilities, but that obviously
breaks things when the URI is actually different.

> This way it is possible to use for example InteProxy for taking care of https
> communication and authentication (even OpenJUMP can do it without proxy as
> well).  This feature has been usuful for me even with WMS services which are
> advertising wrong GetMap URL because very often in these cases the
> GetCapabilities URL works also for GetMap. What do QGis developers think,
> would this be a useful feature to have also in QGis?

Sounds reasonable.  Would you file a ticket for it?


Jürgen

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