How to do HTTP authentication in android?

Question

I am checking out the class org.apache.http.auth. Any more reference or example if anyone has?

Is this a question about Android applications authentication or just about authentication for a general web app, which just might run on Android? — jottos, Dec 28 '09 at 08:02
For web authentication(http authentication) for user credentials(username,password) — Bohemian, Dec 28 '09 at 08:18

score 120 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 22 '16 at 22:34

120

For me, it worked,

final String basicAuth = "Basic " + Base64.encodeToString("user:password".getBytes(), Base64.NO_WRAP);

Apache HttpCLient:

request.setHeader("Authorization", basicAuth);

HttpUrlConnection:

connection.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", basicAuth);

edited Mar 22 '16 at 22:34

GabrielOshiro

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answered Feb 21 '12 at 12:24

cesards

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The NO_WRAP flag! That was key. I was just using the default and wondering why I kept getting a 400. – Robert Massaioli Feb 23 '12 at 04:42
5

Your answer saves me a lot of time. Thanx! My problem was really in wrong flag (DEFAULT). – Johnny Doe Jan 28 '13 at 11:01
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Finally, after a long time... no_wrap FTW! – Thiago Festa Jun 10 '13 at 03:25
Thanks buddy, This is the core:) – John Christy Jul 09 '13 at 09:48
wow - this NO_WRAP just ended my 5 hours problem solving against a server which had no logging... THANX! – slott Dec 19 '13 at 11:57
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Thanks for the nice concise answer! Android Community FTW. – LukeWaggoner Apr 18 '14 at 15:59
Base64.encodeToString() did the trick for me. Previously, I was using Base64.encode() which was resulting in a HTTP response code of 500. – ban-geoengineering May 09 '14 at 20:10
Use connection.setRequestProperty as described in other answers if you are using the HttpURLConnection class – personne3000 May 10 '14 at 09:39
I use this: String basicAuth = Base64.encodeToString(String.format("%s:%s",user,passwd).getBytes(),Base64.DEFAULT); and with NO_WRAP and no way to add credentials... Only get "Basic MTIzNDU2NzhBOnR0YQ==\r\n"... WHY? – Asier Jan 14 '17 at 22:24

Chris Boyle · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-15T13:27:06.073

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I've not met that particular package before, but it says it's for client-side HTTP authentication, which I've been able to do on Android using the java.net APIs, like so:

Authenticator.setDefault(new Authenticator(){
    protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
        return new PasswordAuthentication("myuser","mypass".toCharArray());
    }});
HttpURLConnection c = (HttpURLConnection) new URL(url).openConnection();
c.setUseCaches(false);
c.connect();

Obviously your getPasswordAuthentication() should probably do something more intelligent than returning a constant.

If you're trying to make a request with a body (e.g. POST) with authentication, beware of Android issue 4326. I've linked a suggested fix to the platform there, but there's a simple workaround if you only want Basic auth: don't bother with Authenticator, and instead do this:

c.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "basic " +
        Base64.encode("myuser:mypass".getBytes(), Base64.NO_WRAP));

edited Nov 15 '16 at 13:27

answered Dec 28 '09 at 10:39

Chris Boyle

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Do u know any base64 encoding class present in android 2.0?? – Bohemian Dec 28 '09 at 11:00
The platform has it in a few places, but oddly enough they don't expose it. They even left references to it in the docs of e.g. `android.util`. I was using `ksoap2-android` when I found this, and they have an implementation that depends only on `java.io`, so you could just grab that class (subject to its license of course) from: http://kobjects.cvs.sourceforge.net/kobjects/kobjects/src/org/kobjects/base64/Base64.java?view=markup – Chris Boyle Dec 28 '09 at 11:51
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How do you handle the event that the authentication fails, say because the supplied credentials are bad? – Ken Aug 14 '11 at 06:26
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Base64 is not available in older versions of Android. Any suggestions there? – amit Nov 22 '12 at 19:14
i'm getting an error when trying to c.connect(); , it says IOException – Bachask8 Oct 15 '13 at 15:19
@Bachask8 IOException is probably not related to authentication; I would expect a 401 Unauthorized response if authentication was bad. – Chris Boyle Oct 17 '13 at 11:03
The code with Authenticator is not working for me even for simple GET request. If after c.connect() i call c.getResponseCode(), this hangs indefinitely. My server is using digest authentication. I m using Android api level 15. Same works for non-android platforms. – Yevgeniy P Dec 13 '14 at 08:32
Somehow this doesn't work for me. I am getting "Error response code: 301". Any idea why? – Arjun Kalidas Jul 30 '17 at 17:37
You have to use `Base64.encodeToString` in your example with `c.setRequestProperty` otherwise you're concatenating a base64 array with a string. – Ring Nov 17 '18 at 03:29

score 14 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 03 '11 at 16:45

14

You can manually insert http header to request:

HttpGet request = new HttpGet(...);
request.setHeader("Authorization", "Basic "+Base64.encodeBytes("login:password".getBytes()));

edited Sep 03 '11 at 16:45

answered Mar 15 '11 at 19:24

fo2rist

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score 13 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 08 '12 at 17:37

Manual method works well with import android.util.Base64, but be sure to set Base64.NO_WRAP on calling encode:

String basicAuth = "Basic " + new String(Base64.encode("user:pass".getBytes(),Base64.NO_WRAP ));
connection.setRequestProperty ("Authorization", basicAuth);

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 04 '10 at 11:34

3

For my Android projects I've used the Base64 library from here:

http://iharder.net/base64

It's a very extensive library and so far I've had no problems with it.

answered Jun 04 '10 at 11:34

Oke Uwechue

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 24 '14 at 07:46

This works for me

 URL imageUrl = new URL(url);
                    HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) imageUrl
                            .openConnection();
                    conn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "basic " +
                            Base64.encode("username:password".getBytes()));
                    conn.setConnectTimeout(30000);
                    conn.setReadTimeout(30000);
                    conn.setInstanceFollowRedirects(true);
                    InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();

How to do HTTP authentication in android?

6 Answers6

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