android webview with https connection and basic auth. How to get this working?

Question

I have researched and researched and researched this until I\'ve gone grey and bald. How on earth do I get a webview to work for a site that needs http basic authentication over

Answer 1

This simple example abuses a page on HttpWatch since it's more fun with a working public example.

The resource in question, https://www.httpwatch.com/httpgallery/authentication/authenticatedimage/default.aspx?randomgarbage uses basic auth over HTTPS and can be loaded without authentication failure like this (tested using Android 2.3.7):

    WebView v = ...; // Your webview goes here. 
    try {
        HashMap map = new HashMap();
        // This test service takes the username "httpwatch" and a random
        // password. Repeating a password can lead to failure, so we create
        // a decently random one using UUID.
        String usernameRandomPassword = "httpwatch:" + UUID.randomUUID().toString();
        String authorization = "Basic " + Base64.encodeToString(usernameRandomPassword.getBytes("UTF-8"), Base64.NO_WRAP);
        map.put("Authorization", authorization);
        v.loadUrl("https://www.httpwatch.com/httpgallery/authentication/authenticatedimage/default.aspx?" + System.currentTimeMillis(), map);
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {}

This works on ICS and Gingerbread. Don't have access to anything older than that, but loadUrl(String, Map) was introduced in API level 8, so I don't see why it shouldn't work for that to.

Clarification for Nappy:

To support authentication for subsequent requests you supply a WebViewClient and do the following:

    webView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient(){
        @Override
        public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
            view.loadUrl(url, );
            return true;
        }
    });