It appears (tried with Firefox 3.6 on Mac, and with the latest Google Chrome on Mac) jQuery $.ajax() function does not supply HTTP authentification username/password in the ajax request correctly when the request URL is provided as a full URL (e.g. http://www.something.com/something...)

It seems HTTP authentification username and password are *only* taken into consideration when the request URL is given in a relative forrm (e.g. /something/something)

Here's a code that fails:

$(function() {

$.ajax({

url: 'http://api.something.com/1.0/items',

type: 'POST',

dataType: 'json',

data: {

something: 'something'

},

username: 'someone',

password: 'secret',

success: function(response)

{

alert('done!');

},

error: function()

{

alert('failed!');

}

});

});

Assume that the URL provided in the 'url' parameter (http://api.something.com/1.0/items) asks for HTTP authentification (someone:secret).

In all cases, jQuery made the request to that URL, but did not supply username and password with the request, although they were clearly set. However, when I changed the "url" parameter to something like "/1.0/items" (e.g. accessed stuff from the same domain and with a relative URL), everything worked. And oddly enough, even though when I executed this piece of JavaScript on the same domain I provided in the "url" parameter, it still did not supply the username/password in the request.