Question

I’m trying to do Digest mostly (or Basic) Authentication using RestTemplate and httpclient (4.x).

Since I couldn’t find any relevant examples of how to actually do this, I have attempted various ways to hook the various httpclient artifacts, with no luck – essentially, no Authentication header is sent at all.

My current implementation is:

DefaultHttpClient newHttpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
Credentials credentials = new UsernamePasswordCredentials( username, password );
AuthScope authScope = new AuthScope( host, port, AuthScope.ANY_REALM );
BasicCredentialsProvider credentialsProvider = new BasicCredentialsProvider();
credentialsProvider.setCredentials( authScope, credentials );
newHttpClient.setCredentialsProvider( credentialsProvider );

HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory requestFactory = new HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory( newHttpClient );
restTemplate.setRequestFactory( requestFactory );

Is there something I’m doing wrong? Is there also a working example for this anywhere?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Try implementing your own RequestFactory in order to achieve preemptive authentication.

public class PreEmptiveAuthHttpRequestFactory extends HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory {

public PreEmptiveAuthHttpRequestFactory(DefaultHttpClient client) {
    super(client);
}

@Override
protected HttpContext createHttpContext(HttpMethod httpMethod, URI uri) {
    AuthCache authCache = new BasicAuthCache();
    BasicScheme basicAuth = new BasicScheme();
    HttpHost targetHost = new HttpHost(uri.getHost(), uri.getPort());
    authCache.put(targetHost, basicAuth);
    BasicHttpContext localcontext = new BasicHttpContext();
    localcontext.setAttribute(ClientContext.AUTH_CACHE, authCache);

    return localcontext;
}
}

An then just use it:

HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory requestFactory = new PreEmptiveAuthHttpRequestFactory( newHttpClient );

Hope it helps

---

how to set the username and password (Copied from @bifur’s comment)

You can use UserNamePasswordCredentials

UsernamePasswordCredentials credentials = new UsernamePasswordCredentials(getUsername(),getPassword()); 
client.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(new AuthScope(getHost(), getPort(), AuthScope.ANY_REALM), credentials); 

And just use the client in the previous factory

HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory requestFactory = new PreEmptiveAuthHttpRequestFactory(client);