Rest call authentication in Python

Question

Sorry for this basic question again, still in learning stages of Python. I am writing a Python script that makes a Rest call which will have basic authentication headers included. In this example, the user is luke and password is mypasswd. Since the password is written in clear text, is there a way to encrypt the password within the script or move authentication outside the script in a more secure way? What is the recommended way of authenticatiion when using Rest with Python?

import urllib2
import base64
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

weblink = "https://192.168.1.1/user"
auth = base64.b64encode("luke:mypasswd")
headers = {"Authorization":"Basic " + auth}

Thanks Borja, but my question is more on how to use authentication in a SECURE way? since i have it written in clear text — user3331975
– user3331975, Commented May 29, 2015 at 8:45
This depends on what the server accepts. Does it only offer Basic Auth? — user1907906
– user1907906, Commented May 29, 2015 at 8:52

Tasos Vogiatzoglou · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-29 08:51:43Z

1

You'll have to put somewhere the credentials, so I think you are worried about distributing the credentials with your script. This could be solved by

1) Using a configuration file where you'd store the credentials (https://docs.python.org/2/library/configparser.html)

2) Specify them at the command line

3) Specify them through environment variables.

answered May 29, 2015 at 8:51

Tasos Vogiatzoglou

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user1907906 Over a year ago

I think the question is not about how to get the credentials into the client script. It is more about the fact that Basic Auth uses Base64 which is not encrypted.

Milos Miletic · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-29 09:17:37Z

0

my recommendation is to use requests package.(pip install requests). http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/ Regarding the security of passwords, you can use Global variables perhaps, or some text file with adequate permissions. In linux terminal or .bashrc file: export mypasswd="*******"

import os
import base64
import requests
weblink = "https://192.168.1.1/user"
mypasswd = os.getenv("mypasswd")
auth = base64.b64encode("luke:"+str(mypasswd))
headers = {"Authorization":"Basic " + auth}
#In headers you can have some more properties as Content-Type or so on...
#next would be to call the http method you need(GET,POST,PUT,DELETE)
resp = requests.get(weblink,headers=headers)
print resp.text
print resp.status_code

edited May 29, 2015 at 9:17

answered May 29, 2015 at 9:04

Milos Miletic

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1 Comment

Milos Miletic Over a year ago

So if you are using linux you could do this in terminal or in .bashrc file: export mypasswd="something" and than in python: import os mypasswd = os.getenv("mypasswd")

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