BasicAuthentication policy

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What

Enables you to use lightweight Basic Authentication for last-mile security. The policy takes a username and password, Base64 encodes them, and writes the resulting value to a variable. The resulting value is in the form Basic Base64EncodedString. You typically write this value to an HTTP header, such as the Authorization header.

The policy also lets you decode credentials stored in a Base64 encoded string into a username and password.

Samples

<BasicAuthentication name="ApplyBasicAuthHeader">
   <DisplayName>ApplyBasicAuthHeader</DisplayName>
   <Operation>Encode</Operation>
   <IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>
   <User ref="BasicAuth.credentials.username" />
   <Password ref="BasicAuth.credentials.password" />
   <AssignTo createNew="false">request.header.Authorization</AssignTo>
</BasicAuthentication>

{
  "encrypted" : true,
  "entry" : [ {
    "name" : "username",
    "value" : "MyUsername"
  }, {
    "name" : "password",
    "value" : "MyPassword"
  } ],
  "name" : "BasicAuthCredentials"
}
      

<KeyValueMapOperations name="getCredentials" mapIdentifier="BasicAuthCredentials">
  <Scope>apiproxy</Scope>
  <Get assignTo="credentials.username" index='1'>
    <Key>
      <Parameter>username</Parameter>
    </Key>
  </Get>
  <Get assignTo="credentials.password" index='1'>
    <Key>
      <Parameter>password</Parameter>
    </Key>
  </Get>
</KeyValueMapOperations>
      

<BasicAuthentication name="DecodeBaseAuthHeaders">
   <DisplayName>Decode Basic Authentication Header</DisplayName>
   <Operation>Decode</Operation>
   <IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>
   <User ref="request.header.username" />
   <Password ref="request.header.password" />
   <Source>request.header.Authorization</Source>
</BasicAuthentication>

About the Basic Authentication policy

The policy has two modes of operations:

• Encode: Base64 encodes a username and password stored in variables
• Decode: Decodes the username and password from a Base64 encoded string

The username and password are commonly stored the key/value store and then read from the key/value store at runtime. For details on using key/value store, see Key Value Map Operations policy.

Element reference

The element reference describes the elements and attributes of the BasicAuthentication policy.

<BasicAuthentication async="false" continueOnError="false" enabled="true" name="Basic-Authentication-1">
   <DisplayName>Basic Authentication 1</DisplayName>
   <Operation>Encode</Operation>
   <IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>
   <User ref="request.queryparam.username" />
   <Password ref="request.queryparam.password" />
   <AssignTo createNew="false">request.header.Authorization</AssignTo>
   <Source>request.header.Authorization</Source> 
</BasicAuthentication>

<BasicAuthentication> attributes

<BasicAuthentication async="false" continueOnError="false" enabled="true" name="Basic-Authentication-1">

The following table describes attributes that are common to all policy parent elements:

<DisplayName> element

Use in addition to the name attribute to label the policy in the management UI proxy editor with a different, natural-language name.

<DisplayName>Policy Display Name</DisplayName>

<Operation> element

Determines whether the policy Base64 encodes or decodes credentials.

<Operation>Encode</Operation>

<IgnoreUnresolvedVariables> element

When set to true, the policy will not throw an error if a variable cannot be resolved. When used in the context of a BasicAuthentication policy, this setting is usually set to false because it is generally beneficial to throw an error if a username or password cannot be found in the variables specified.

<IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>

<User> element

• For encoding, use the <User> element to specify the variable containing the username. Username and password values are concatenated with a colon prior to Base64 encoding.
• For decoding, specify the variable where the decoded username is written.

<User ref="request.queryparam.username" /> 

Attributes

<Password> element

• For encoding, use the <Password> element to specify the variable containing the password.
• For decoding, specify the variable where the decoded password is written.

<Password ref="request.queryparam.password" />

Attributes

<AssignTo> element

Specifies the target variable to set with the encoded or decoded value generated by this policy.

The following example indicates that the policy should set the Authorization header of the message to the generated value:

<AssignTo createNew="false">request.header.Authorization</AssignTo>

Attributes

<Source> element

For decoding, the variable containing the Base64 encoded string, in the form Basic Base64EncodedString. For example, specify request.header.Authorization, corresponding to the Authorization header.

<Source>request.header.Authorization</Source>

Flow variables

The following flow variable is set when the policy fails:

• BasicAuthentication.{policy_name}.failed (with a value of true)

Error reference

This section describes the fault codes and error messages that are returned and fault variables that are set by Edge when this policy triggers an error. This information is important to know if you are developing fault rules to handle errors. To learn more, see What you need to know about policy errors and Handling faults.

Runtime errors

These errors can occur when the policy executes.

Deployment errors

These errors can occur when you deploy a proxy containing this policy.

Fault variables

These variables are set when a runtime error occurs. For more information, see What you need to know about policy errors.

Example error response

{  
   "fault":{  
      "detail":{  
         "errorcode":"steps.basicauthentication.UnresolvedVariable"
      },
      "faultstring":"Unresolved variable : request.queryparam.password"
   }
}

Example fault rule

<FaultRule name="Basic Authentication Faults">
    <Step>
        <Name>AM-UnresolvedVariable</Name>
        <Condition>(fault.name Matches "UnresolvedVariable") </Condition>
    </Step>
    <Step>
        <Name>AM-AuthFailedResponse</Name>
        <Condition>(fault.name = "InvalidBasicAuthenticationSource")</Condition>
    </Step>
    <Condition>(BasicAuthentication.BA-Authentication.failed = true) </Condition>
</FaultRule>

Schemas

Related topics

Key Value Map Operations policy