Question

I am trying to replicate a database using .NET classes (httpWebRequest) instead of curl. Unfortunately, the cURL works, but the (assumably) same syntax in .NET fails with a 404 “Unauthorized to access or create database” error. Below is my code.

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("sourceURL");
        request.Method = "POST";
        request.ContentType = "application/json";

        long ticks = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks;

        string json = "{ \"_id\":\"database_replicate" + ticks + "\", \"source\":\"sourceURL/database\", \"target\":\"database\", \"create_target\":true, \"user_ctx\": { \"roles\": [\"_admin\"] } }";

        using (var writer = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream()))
        {
            writer.Write(json);
            writer.Close();
        }

Then it fails right here, on the response:

HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

I am replicating to and from localhost. I’ve tried passing the credentials using request.Credentials, but that doesn’t change the problem. Neither does passing the credentials explicitly in the url.

Answer 1

As it turns out, the problem was that my username and password weren’t being caught. Whether I tried passing them in as part of the url, or as a credential attribute, it wasn’t picking them up. I had to create an authorize header like this

$authorization = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.ASCIIEncoding]::ASCII.GetBytes("username" + ":" + "password")) 
$delRequest.Headers.Add("Authorization", "authType " + $authorization)

to make it work.