401 accessing no-auth required Twitter user timeline

Question

according to the twitter api documentation

http://dev.twitter.com/doc/get/statuses/user_timeline

accessing the current logged in users timeline does not require auth. But i'm getting a basic auth not supported response and a 401 when I debug in javascript.

anybody have experience getting the current users info?

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json

Specifying a user works fine with

http://twitter.com/users/show.json?screen_name=example&callback=?

Answer 1

Accessing http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json requires authentication because it will return current logged in user's status timeline. So if you are not logged in, there will be no timeline to return.

On the other hand, twitter should return a 404 error instead of a 401.

Now, try adding a screen name: http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=jack, it'll work.