Spring RestTemplate receives "401 Unauthorized" - spring

Question

I am using the following to retrieve JSON via RestTemplate in Spring 4:
protected DocInfoResponse retrieveData(String urlWithAuth) {
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.add("Authorization", "Basic " + auth.getSig());
HttpEntity<String> request = new HttpEntity<String>(headers);
ResponseEntity<DocInfoResponse> response = restTemplate.exchange(urlWithAuth, HttpMethod.GET, request, DocInfoResponse.class);
return response.getBody();
}
I used the same code (with different response class) to successfully get a JSON doc from the same site (with different parameters to get a different doc).
When I execute the above code I receive the following stack trace (in part):
Caused by: org.springframework.web.client.HttpClientErrorException: 401 Unauthorized
at
org.springframework.web.client.DefaultResponseErrorHandler.handleError(DefaultResponseErrorHandler.java:91) ~[spring-web-4.3.7.RELEASE.jar:4.3.7.RELEASE]
Can anyone point me to why this might be receiving the exception?

Answer 1

I found that my issue originally posted above was due to double encryption happening on the auth params. I resolved it by using UriComponentsBuilder and explicitly calling encode() on the the exchange().
SyncResponse retrieveData(UriComponentsBuilder builder) {
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.set("Accept", MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE);
HttpEntity<String> request = new HttpEntity<String>(headers);
ResponseEntity<SyncResponse> response = restTemplate.exchange(builder.build().encode().toUri(), HttpMethod.GET, request, SyncResponse.class);
return response.getBody();
}
My UriComponentsBuilder was built using:
UriComponentsBuilder buildUrl(String urlString) {
UriComponentsBuilder builder = UriComponentsBuilder.fromHttpUrl(urlString);
return auth.appendAuth(builder);
}
(The auth.appendAuth() adds additional .queryParams() needed by the target service in urlString.)
The call to execute this was retrieveData(buildUrl(urlString));.

Answer 2

After investigating on my own problem, I realized that FireFox RESTClient was successful because I was connected to the target URL. The Basic Auth I thought I was using, was not so basic after all.
Eventually, I read the doc of the app i was trying to connect to and realized they propose a connection token mechanism. Now it works.
After reading your code, I say it looks quite OK, although I'm not sure what is your object auth on which you call getSig.
First things first: try to access your service from any client, like a web browser, a PostMan or RESTClient. Make sure you successfully retrieve your infos WITHOUT being connected to your app!!!
Depending on the result, I say you should, either try to encrypt manually your Authorization token (you'll easilly find posts on this site to show you how to) or try another connection mechanism.

Answer 3

The process of creating the Authorization header is relatively straightforward for Basic Authentication, so it can pretty much be done manually with a few lines of code:
HttpHeaders createHeaders(String username, String password){
return new HttpHeaders() {{
String auth = username + ":" + password;
byte[] encodedAuth = Base64.encodeBase64(
auth.getBytes(Charset.forName("US-ASCII")) );
String authHeader = "Basic " + new String( encodedAuth );
set( "Authorization", authHeader );
}};
}
Then, sending a request becomes just as simple:
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
restTemplate.exchange
(uri, HttpMethod.POST, new HttpEntity<T>(createHeaders(username, password)), clazz);
https://www.baeldung.com/how-to-use-resttemplate-with-basic-authentication-in-spring#manual_auth