Why can't I just send rest calls to MVC3? - asp.net-mvc-3

Question

I'm trying to send requests to my MVC3 app, I've tried regular WebRequest, I'm trying it with RestSharp applying correct Authenticator, but it still returns the redirect result of login page?
What am i doing wrong?
upd: How should I do forms authentication with RestSharp? I guess it's possible somehow - just need to play around that cookie...

Answer 1

If you are getting redirected to a login page your mvc 3 app must be setup for forms authentication. Forms authentication will want a cookie sent with the request. If you are using the basic authenticator in RestSharp this will not work. I assume that you are using the MVC controller to provide a REST API that you are trying to call.
One option is to upgrade to MVC 4 and use the ASP.NET Web API to develop your REST API's. The authorization behavior is a little different in an ASP.NET Web API in that it will return an HTTP 401 error instead of doing a redirect. And you can customize the AuthorizationAttribute to pull the information out of the HTTP header for basic authentication and authorization.
Another option is if the action on the controller does not require authentication/authorization you can put the AllowAnonymousAttribute on the method.

Answer 2

To pass the Forms authentication you gotta get the cookie and stick it to RestSharp's cookie container. To get the cookie you can use just regular WebRequest.
private Cookie GetAuthCookie(string user, string pass)
{
var http = WebRequest.Create(_baseUrl+"Users/Login") as HttpWebRequest;
http.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
http.Method = "POST";
http.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
http.CookieContainer = new CookieContainer();
var postData = "UserName=" + user + "&Password=" + pass + "&RememberMe=true&RememberMe=false&ReturnUrl=www.google.com";
byte[] dataBytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);
http.ContentLength = dataBytes.Length;
using (var postStream = http.GetRequestStream())
{
postStream.Write(dataBytes, 0, dataBytes.Length);
}
var httpResponse = http.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
return httpResponse.Cookies[FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName];
}