The multipart stream / hanging GET approach worked in a prototype for a
single stream, but Chrome has a per-host limit of six connections. If I
try streaming all my cameras at once, I hit that limit. I can't open all
the streams, much less additional connections to load init segments and
such. Websockets apparently has a much higher limit of 256.
(I also considered the names "capabilities" and "scopes", but I think
"permissions" is the most widely understood.)
This is increasingly necessary as the web API becomes more capable.
Among other things, it allows:
* non-administrator users who can view but not access camera passwords
or change any state
* workers that update signal state based on cameras' built-in motion
detection or a security system's events but don't need to view videos
* control over what can be done without authenticating
Currently session permissions are just copied from user permissions, but
you can also imagine admin sessions vs not, as a checkbox when signing
in. This would match the standard Unix workflow of using a
non-administrative session most of the time.
Relevant to my current signals work (#28) and to the addition of an
administrative API (#35, including #66).
Apparently with docopt, --require-auth=false doesn't work, so booleans
with a default value of true can't be turned off. Toggle the default to
false to deal with this, for now. I'd prefer the default be true, but
I also would prefer to not use a negative --no-require-auth or
--allow-unauthenticated flag. I think I'll switch from docopt to clap
in the near future; it seems to be what the cool kids use.
The guide is not as quick to follow and amateur-friendly as I'd like. A
few things that might improve matters:
* complete #27 (built-in https+letsencrypt), so that when not sharing
the port, users don't need to use nginx or certbot.
* more ubiquitous IPv6 (out of my control but should happen over
time) to reduce need to share the port
* embed a dynamic DNS client
* support UPnP Internet Gateway Device Control Protocol (if common
routers have this enabled? probably not for security reasons.)
It's progress, though. Enough that I think I'll merge the auth branch
into master shortly.
