I'm reviewing the Salesforce/USDirectory/LegacyCRM demo connectors distributed with the c8o studio and I'm trying to understand how the authentication with Salesforce works.

I see that the Login transaction takes 2 variables (a username and a password) but I don't see where these variables are actually used? But if I execute the transaction through the studio, I am logged in using the default values for these variables.

How do these default values get to Salesforce?

Good question !

This uses the Convertigo's capability to use an HTML Transaction to directly HTTP POST data to a Web application.

If you look carefully you will see that the Login transaction has 2 variables (username, and password). Each of these variables have a 'HTTP Method' and a 'HTTP name' attributes. The Both 'HTTP Method' are set to 'POST' and the HTTP are set to 'un' and 'pw'

This means that as this transaction is Stateless (Maintain connector state set to 'false'), the first thing the transaction will do is to POST on the 'Sub Path' attribute (Set to login.jsp) the 'un' and to 'pw' variables set to the content of the 'username' and 'password'

This a very good way to optimize the initial connection without waiting to load and parse the form before to post it to the target server.

Have a look to :

doc.convertigo.com/JSPWiki/Wiki.jsp?page...ebIntegratorConcepts

This is very interesting! It seems like a much more efficient way to authenticate to SFC.

However, it only stirs another question in my mind; how did you know to do this? Perhaps some clever use of Firebug (or something similar) to spy on the requests to the server?

Firebug is your Friend