Basic authentication for REST API using spring restTemplate

Question

I am completely new in RestTemplate and basically in the REST APIs also. I want to retrieve some data in my application via Jira REST API, but getting back 401 Unauthorised.

Answer 1

Reference Spring Boot's TestRestTemplate implementation as follows:

https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/blob/v1.2.2.RELEASE/spring-boot/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/test/TestRestTemplate.java

Especially, see the addAuthentication() method as follows:

private void addAuthentication(String username, String password) {
    if (username == null) {
        return;
    }
    List<ClientHttpRequestInterceptor> interceptors = Collections
            .<ClientHttpRequestInterceptor> singletonList(new BasicAuthorizationInterceptor(
                    username, password));
    setRequestFactory(new InterceptingClientHttpRequestFactory(getRequestFactory(),
            interceptors));
}

Similarly, you can make your own RestTemplate easily

by inheritance like TestRestTemplate as follows:

https://github.com/izeye/samples-spring-boot-branches/blob/rest-and-actuator-with-security/src/main/java/samples/springboot/util/BasicAuthRestTemplate.java

Answer 2

Taken from the example on this site, I think this would be the most natural way of doing it, by filling in the header value and passing the header to the template.

This is to fill in the header Authorization:

String plainCreds = "willie:p@ssword";
byte[] plainCredsBytes = plainCreds.getBytes();
byte[] base64CredsBytes = Base64.encodeBase64(plainCredsBytes);
String base64Creds = new String(base64CredsBytes);

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.add("Authorization", "Basic " + base64Creds);

And this is to pass the header to the REST template:

HttpEntity<String> request = new HttpEntity<String>(headers);
ResponseEntity<Account> response = restTemplate.exchange(url, HttpMethod.GET, request, Account.class);
Account account = response.getBody();