Authentication headers using Rest Client Ruby Gem

Question

I have already created a basic authentication key, now I am just trying to utilize it. I have tried a few different variations, but none seem to show Authorization in the request headers.

$auth = 'Basic cmFtZXNoQHVzYW1hLmNvbTpyYW1lc2h1JEBtcA=='


@response = resource.post('Authorization' => $auth)
nor
@response = resource.post(:authorization => $auth)
nor
@response = resource.post(:Authorization => $auth)
nor
@response = resource.post(:content_type => :json, :accept => :json, :headers => { 'Authorization:' => $auth })

Unfortunately I am not finding a lot of info in the rdoc that can help me solve this. Does anyone have experience adding auth headers using the Rest Client gem?

Answer 1

Even though I didn't have a payload to send I was trying to send one without. This ended up being the cause. So I included:

json_str = ''
@response = resource.post(json_str, :content_type => :json, :accept => :json, :Authorization => $auth)

And this worked.

Answer 2

If you don't want to use RestClient::Resource, you can include basic auth in a request like this:

RestClient::Request.execute method: :get, url: url, user: 'username', password: 'secret'

The trick is not to use the RestClient.get (or .post, .put etc.) methods since all options you pass in there are used as headers.

I just did a quick writeup on this over here: https://www.krautcomputing.com/blog/2015/06/21/how-to-use-basic-authentication-with-the-ruby-rest-client-gem/

Answer 3

For Basic Auth, you should be able to set the user and password in plaintext when you create the resource:

resource = RestClient::Resource.new( 'http://example.com', 'user', 'password' )

But if you really need to set the header directly per request:

@response = resource.post( request_payload, :Authorization => $auth )

should work. If it does not, then you may have set $auth incorrectly. However, I think you just missed adding the request payload, so it was using the hash you supplied for that required param, and not setting any headers at all.

Here's a complete and working example using get (I don't have a test service available with Basic Auth and POST)

require 'rest-client'
require 'base64'
$auth = 'Basic ' + Base64.encode64( 'user:passwd' ).chomp
$url = 'http://httpbin.org/basic-auth/user/passwd'

@resource = RestClient::Resource.new( $url )
@response = @resource.get( :Authorization => $auth )
# => "{\n  \"authenticated\": true,\n  \"user\": \"user\"\n}"

Note: Though this works, I recommend you use the first and simplest method of supplying user and password to the constructor unless you have good reason not to.