{"id":2655,"date":"2004-07-08T17:24:49","date_gmt":"2004-07-09T07:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/08\/reading-protected-livejournal-entries-via-rss\/"},"modified":"2019-12-10T16:37:54","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:37:54","slug":"reading-protected-livejournal-entries-via-rss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/07\/08\/reading-protected-livejournal-entries-via-rss\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading protected LiveJournal entries via RSS"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:7761,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260310005826\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6753,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.interalia.org&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20251009035228\\\/http:\\\/\\\/interalia.org\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-09 09:15:58&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 17:25:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-28 22:39:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 08:28:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 08:28:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:10636,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/inessential.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260311071234\\\/https:\\\/\\\/inessential.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/inessential.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:21&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:21&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:10637,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com\\\/community\\\/lj_dev\\\/627644.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20050906083145\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com:80\\\/community\\\/lj_dev\\\/627644.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 07:10:55&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:25&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:25&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:5990,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com\\\/users\\\/djwudi&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20081007110713\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.livejournal.com\\\/users\\\/djwudi\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 17:08:07&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:410},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 13:19:06&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-25 04:56:41&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:410},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-29 01:49:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:410},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 22:42:39&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:410}],&quot;broken&quot;:true,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 22:42:39&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:410},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Being able to subscribe to an RSS feed for any <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/\" title=\"LiveJournal\">LiveJournal<\/a> weblog by adding <code>\/rss<\/code> to the end of the URL is all well and good, but I&#8217;ve been grumbling for a while that the downside to that is that it won&#8217;t let you read protected &#8220;friends only&#8221; entries, as by pulling the RSS feed you&#8217;re not actually logged into the LiveJournal system.<\/p>\n<p>Well, many thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.interalia.org\/\" title=\"Among Other Things\">Phil<\/a> for pointing out a trick he picked up from <a href=\"http:\/\/inessential.com\/\" title=\"inessential.com\">Brent Simmons<\/a> &#8212; if you add <code>\/rss?auth=digest<\/code> to the end of the URL, and include the standard HTTP authentication at the beginning of the URL (<code>username:password@<\/code> between the protocol and the server address), then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/community\/lj_dev\/627644.html\" title=\"Digest auth for RSS\">the RSS feed will include the protected entries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/djwudi\/\" title=\"Sub-Eclecticism\">my LiveJournal<\/a> as an example (even though it doesn&#8217;t have any protected entries, it&#8217;ll work for demonstrating the URL changes)&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>LiveJournal URL: <code>http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/djwudi\/<\/code><\/li>\n<li>LiveJournal RSS feed: <code>http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/djwudi\/rss<\/code> (which actually maps to <code>http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/djwudi\/data\/rss<\/code>)<\/li>\n<li>LiveJournal RSS feed <em>with protected entries<\/em>: <code>http:\/\/username:password@www.livejournal.com\/users\/djwudi\/data\/rss?auth=digest<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Update: It appears that at some point over the past few months, ending the URL with <code>?auth=digest<\/code> is no longer necessary. Simply using the string <code>http:\/\/username:password@www.livejournal.com\/users\/username\/data\/rss<\/code> (where the first &#8216;username&#8217; and &#8216;password&#8217; set are yours, and the second &#8216;username&#8217; is that of the journal you&#8217;re reading) seems to work fine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTE:<\/strong> This is <em>not<\/em> a technique for &#8220;hacking&#8221; LiveJournal to allow you to read protected entries that you would not otherwise have access to! All this does is allow you to &#8216;log in&#8217; to LiveJournal via your RSS reader so that you can read your friends protected entries just as if you were logged in to the LiveJournal web interface. I do not know of a way to read protected entries that you have not been granted access to, and I&#8217;m not interested in trying to find one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>iTunes:<\/strong> &#8220;Getting Snippy With It&#8221; by Rollins, Henry from the album <em>Talk is Cheap, Vol. 1<\/em> (2003, 6:48).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to read protected &#8216;friends only&#8217; LiveJournal posts in your RSS aggregator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040],"tags":[599],"class_list":["post-2655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}