title: Designing a web api: How to authenticate?
body: <p>I am designing a web api. I need to let the user authenticate themselves. I am a little hesistant to let the user pass in their username/password in cleartext.. something like: api.mysite.com/auth.php?user=x&amp;pass=y</p>
  
  <p>Another option i read about was Base64 encoding the username/password and then sending a HTTP request. So does that mean that on the server side;I would _GET['user'] and _GET['password'] and then somehow decode them?</p>
  
  <p>Is that what twitter does: <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation#Authentication" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation#Authentication</a> ?</p>