Use basic authentication with jQuery and Ajax

Question

I am trying to create a basic authentication through the browser, but I can\'t really get there.

If this script won\'t be here the browser authentication will take o

Answer 1

The examples above are a bit confusing, and this is probably the best way:

$.ajaxSetup({
  headers: {
    'Authorization': "Basic " + btoa(USERNAME + ":" + PASSWORD)
  }
});

I took the above from a combination of Rico and Yossi's answer.

The btoa function Base64 encodes a string.

Answer 2

Or, simply use the headers property introduced in 1.5:

headers: {"Authorization": "Basic xxxx"}

Reference: jQuery Ajax API

Answer 3

How things change in a year. In addition to the header attribute in place of xhr.setRequestHeader, current jQuery (1.7.2+) includes a username and password attribute with the $.ajax call.

$.ajax
({
  type: "GET",
  url: "index1.php",
  dataType: 'json',
  username: username,
  password: password,
  data: '{ "comment" }',
  success: function (){
    alert('Thanks for your comment!'); 
  }
});

EDIT from comments and other answers: To be clear - in order to preemptively send authentication without a 401 Unauthorized response, instead of setRequestHeader (pre -1.7) use 'headers':

$.ajax
({
  type: "GET",
  url: "index1.php",
  dataType: 'json',
  headers: {
    "Authorization": "Basic " + btoa(USERNAME + ":" + PASSWORD)
  },
  data: '{ "comment" }',
  success: function (){
    alert('Thanks for your comment!'); 
  }
});

Answer 4

There are 3 ways to achieve this as shown below

Method 1:

var uName="abc";
var passwrd="pqr";

$.ajax({
    type: '{GET/POST}',
    url: '{urlpath}',
    headers: {
        "Authorization": "Basic " + btoa(uName+":"+passwrd);
    },
    success : function(data) {
      //Success block  
    },
   error: function (xhr,ajaxOptions,throwError){
    //Error block 
  },
});

Method 2:

var uName="abc";
var passwrd="pqr";

$.ajax({
    type: '{GET/POST}',
    url: '{urlpath}',
     beforeSend: function (xhr){ 
        xhr.setRequestHeader('Authorization', "Basic " + btoa(uName+":"+passwrd)); 
    },
    success : function(data) {
      //Success block 
   },
   error: function (xhr,ajaxOptions,throwError){
    //Error block 
  },
});

Method 3:

var uName="abc";
var passwrd="pqr";

$.ajax({
    type: '{GET/POST}',
    url: '{urlpath}',
    username:uName,
    password:passwrd, 
    success : function(data) {
    //Success block  
   },
    error: function (xhr,ajaxOptions,throwError){
    //Error block 
  },
});

Answer 5

JSONP does not work with basic authentication so the jQuery beforeSend callback won't work with JSONP/Script.

I managed to work around this limitation by adding the user and password to the request (e.g. user:pw@domain.tld). This works with pretty much any browser except Internet Explorer where authentication through URLs is not supported (the call will simply not be executed).

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834489.

Answer 6

Use jQuery's beforeSend callback to add an HTTP header with the authentication information:

beforeSend: function (xhr) {
    xhr.setRequestHeader ("Authorization", "Basic " + btoa(username + ":" + password));
},