Log in to a web site using Basic authentication C#

Question

I'm trying to write a program to access to a web site using basic authentication method.

Site address is: http://sv1.apple-media.in/

I used this code to read site content:

String username = "XXXX";
String password = "XXXX";
String url = "http://sv1.apple-media.in/";
WebRequest myReq = WebRequest.Create(url);
CredentialCache mycache = new CredentialCache();
mycache.Add(new Uri(url), "Basic", new NetworkCredential(username, password));
myReq.Credentials = mycache;
myReq.GetResponse();

But I always get this error:

System.Net.WebException was unhandled
   HResult=-2146233079
   Message=The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.
   Source=System
   StackTrace:
      at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
      at IDMDownloadListAdderPlugin.Form1.button1_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in c:\Users\amir\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\IDMDownloadListAdderPlugin\IDMDownloadListAdderPlugin\Form1.cs:line 60
      at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
      at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
      at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
      at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessageW(MSG& msg)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(IntPtr dwComponentID, Int32 reason, Int32 pvLoopData)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
      at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(Form mainForm)
      at IDMDownloadListAdderPlugin.Program.Main() in c:\Users\amir\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\IDMDownloadListAdderPlugin\IDMDownloadListAdderPlugin\Program.cs:line 19
      at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(RuntimeAssembly assembly, String[] args)
      at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args)
      at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly()
      at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)
      at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
      at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
      at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
      at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()
   InnerException:

When I log in to the web site using chrome browser, the header is:

Remote Address:31.3.247.107:80
Request URL:http://sv1.apple-media.in/
Request Method:GET
Status Code:200 OK
Request Headersview source
Accept:text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding:gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8,fa;q=0.6
Authorization:Basic something
Cache-Control:max-age=0
Connection:keep-alive
Host:sv1.apple-media.in
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)                 Chrome/38.0.2125.111 Safari/537.36
Response Headersview source
Connection:keep-alive
Content-Encoding:gzip
Content-Type:text/html
Date:Tue, 11 Nov 2014 03:23:28 GMT
Server:nginx
Transfer-Encoding:chunked
Vary:Accept-Encoding

Can someone tell me what i do wrong please?

Thanks!

Quick note: you just posted your username and password to a public website. May want to change that... — Mitch
– Mitch, Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 16:58
In the Authorization header. It is just a base64 encoded version of the username and password. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication#Client_side (This is actually one way to answer your question - myReq.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + encoded);) — Mitch
– Mitch, Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 17:14
So you mean i should just encode username and password to base64 String? and thanks, edited my post. — amir.sh
– amir.sh, Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 17:35
That worked thanks!Just please post it to answers so I can mark it as answer. Thanks alot — amir.sh
– amir.sh, Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 17:49

Mitch · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-06 16:05:59Z

3

Instead of using the NetworkCredential, you can add the header yourself. See Basic Authentication for the exact format.

// fixed encoding, but taken from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25852551
string username = "Your username";
string password = "Your password";

// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7242316/what-encoding-should-i-use-for-http-basic-authentication
var ISO_8859_1 = Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1");
var svcCredentials = Convert.ToBase64String(ISO_8859_1.GetBytes(username + ":" + password));

myReq.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + svcCredentials);

edited May 6, 2017 at 16:05

answered Nov 10, 2014 at 17:56

Mitch

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1 Comment

Prateek Over a year ago

Instead of using UTF8 as the encoding you should prefer ISO-8859-1 as suggested here What encoding should I use for HTTP Basic Authentication?. So the code should change to Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1").GetBytes(username + ":" + password)

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