HTTP Authentication Headers for IIS windows authentication

Question

Hi All,

I have a web site hosted on IIS with windows authentication. I am trying to access it in one of my iPhone web application. Presently i am using this code, but it is not working.

NSString *authString = [[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@:%@", @"myusername", @"mypassword"]dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64Encoding];

authString = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"Basic %@", authString];

**[requestObj setValue:authString forHTTPHeaderField:@"Authorization"];**

my web app is hosted with windows authentication. but here i am using basic. can any one post what is the correct http header for it.

Thanks..

Answer 1

Windows authentication (NTLM) isn't as simple as basic authentication. NTLM requires more than one webrequest to negotiate the security so there isn't a static HTTP header you can send to log in.

Answer 2

You can use the third-party ASIHTTPRequest library to perform NTLM over HTTP authentication.

Answer 3

I'm not 100% sure it supports NTLM Authentication but have you investigated the connection:didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge method on the NSUrlConnection?

Answer 4

I think the main difference is you need to specify the domain you are authenticating against as well as the username and password. Something like this should work. I've used a synchronous request for brevity, ideally you should use an ASINetworkQueue or NSOperationQueue to perform the request.

NSString *username = @"test";
NSString *password = @"test";
NSString *domain = @"test";
NSURL *url = [[[NSURL alloc] initWithString:@"http://myurl"] autorelease];
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [[[ASIHTTPRequest alloc] initWithURL:url] autorelease];
[request setUseSessionPersistance:YES];
[request setUsername:username];
[request setPassword:password];
[request setDomain:domain];
[request start];
if ([request error]) {
    if ([[request error] code] == ASIAuthenticationErrorType) {
     //Authentication failed
    }
} else {
    NSLog([request responseString]);
}

I don't have access to a Windows server to test this, but I have tested NTLM in the past so it should work... :)