[cups.development] Correct way for a backend to connect to local CUPS server ?

[Jerome Alet]

Hi there,

I'd like to know what is the (or is there a) correct way for a 
backend to connect to the local CUPS server to do some IPP requests, 
in particular if CUPS is configured to only accept authenticated 
requests. When anonymous accesses are allowed there's no problem
it works fine.

If an username and password are expected by CUPS, I could tell my 
backend to always connect as the same user on http://localhost:631, 
and store this user's password in the clear somewhere, but this 
sucks as far as security is concerned. 

I've just downloaded the latest CUPS' 1.2.x from svn and briefly
looked at the different backends' source, especially snmp.c and
ipp.c, but both seem to connect only to remote printers, not
to the CUPS server on localhost.

Is this possible at all ?

Thx in advance

Jerome Alet