Basic HTTP authentication in Node.JS?

Question

I'm trying to write a REST-API server with NodeJS like the one used by Joyent, and everything is ok except I can't verify a normal user's authentication. If I jump to a terminal and do curl -u username:password localhost:8000 -X GET, I can't get the values username:password on the NodeJS http server. If my NodeJS http server is something like

var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");

, shouldn't I get the values username:password somewhere in the req object that comes from the callback ? How can I get those values without having to use Connect's basic http auth ?

Answer 1

You can use http-auth module

// Authentication module.
var auth = require('http-auth');
var basic = auth.basic({
    realm: "Simon Area.",
    file: __dirname + "/../data/users.htpasswd" // gevorg:gpass, Sarah:testpass ...
});

// Creating new HTTP server.
http.createServer(basic, function(req, res) {
    res.end("Welcome to private area - " + req.user + "!");
}).listen(1337);