BasicAuthentication policy

This page applies to Apigee and Apigee hybrid.

View Apigee Edge documentation.

What

Enables you to use lightweight Basic Authentication for last-mile security. The policy takes a username and password, Base64 encodes them, and writes the resulting value to a variable. The resulting value is in the form Basic Base64EncodedString. You typically write this value to an HTTP header, such as the Authorization header.

The policy also lets you decode credentials stored in a Base64 encoded string into a username and password.

This policy is an Extensible policy and use of this policy might have cost or utilization implications, depending on your Apigee license. For information on policy types and usage implications, see Policy types.

Note: This policy does not enforce Basic Authentication on a request to an API proxy. Instead, you use it to Base64 encode/decode credentials, typically when connecting to a backend server or using a service callout policy, such as the Service Callout policy, that requires Basic Authentication.

Note: The following videos show the classic Proxy Editor in the Apigee UI. Apigee is introducing a new version of the Proxy Editor, which has a different design than the classic version shown in the videos.

Video: This video demonstrates how to base64-encode a username and password using the Basic Authentication policy.

Video: This video demonstrates how to decode a base64-encoded username and password using the Basic Authentication policy.

Samples

Outbound encoding

<BasicAuthentication name="ApplyBasicAuthHeader">
   <DisplayName>ApplyBasicAuthHeader</DisplayName>
   <Operation>Encode</Operation>
   <IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>
   <User ref="BasicAuth.credentials.username" />
   <Password ref="BasicAuth.credentials.password" />
   <AssignTo createNew="false">request.header.Authorization</AssignTo>
</BasicAuthentication>

In the sample policy configuration above, the username and password to be encoded are derived from the variables specified by the ref attributes on the <User> and <Password> elements. The variables must be set before this policy executes. Typically, the variables are populated by values that are read from a key/value map. See Key Value Map Operations policy.

This configuration results in the HTTP header named Authorization, as specified by the <AssignTo> element, being added to the outbound request message sent to the backend server:

Authorization: Basic TXlVc2VybmFtZTpNeVBhc3N3b3Jk

The <User> and <Password> values are concatenated with a colon prior to Base64 encoding.

Consider that you have a key/value map with the following entry:

{
  "encrypted" : true,
  "entry" : [ {
    "name" : "username",
    "value" : "MyUsername
  }, {
    "name" : "password",
    "value" : "MyPassword
  } ],
  "name" : "BasicAuthCredentials"
}
      

Attach the following KeyValueMapOperations policies before the BasicAuthentication policy to be able to extract the values for your <User> and <Password> elements from the key/value store and populate them to the variables credentials.username and credentials.password.

<KeyValueMapOperations name="getCredentials" mapIdentifier="BasicAuthCredentials">
  <Scope>apiproxy</Scope>
  <Get assignTo="credentials.username" index='1'>
    <Key>
      <Parameter>username</Parameter>
    </Key>
  </Get>
  <Get assignTo="credentials.password" index='1'>
    <Key>
      <Parameter>password</Parameter>
    </Key>
  </Get>
</KeyValueMapOperations>
      

Inbound decoding

<BasicAuthentication name="DecodeBaseAuthHeaders">
   <DisplayName>Decode Basic Authentication Header</DisplayName>
   <Operation>Decode</Operation>
   <IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>
   <User ref="request.header.username" />
   <Password ref="request.header.password" />
   <Source>request.header.Authorization</Source>
</BasicAuthentication>

In this policy sample, the policy decodes the username and password from the Authorization HTTP header, as specified by the <Source> element. The Base64 encoded string must be in the form Basic Base64EncodedString.

The policy writes the decoded username to the request.header.username variable and the decoded password to the request.header.password variable.

---

About the Basic Authentication policy

The policy has two modes of operations:

• Encode: Base64 encodes a username and password stored in variables
• Decode: Decodes the username and password from a Base64 encoded string

The username and password are commonly stored the key/value store and then read from the key/value store at runtime. For details on using key/value store, see Key Value Map Operations policy.

Warning: Basic authentication does not provide confidentiality. Always send credentials over a TLS-enabled (HTTPS) connection to your backend service.

Element reference

The element reference describes the elements and attributes of the BasicAuthentication policy.

<BasicAuthentication async="false" continueOnError="false" enabled="true" name="Basic-Authentication-1">
   <DisplayName>Basic Authentication 1</DisplayName>
   <Operation>Encode</Operation>
   <IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>
   <User ref="request.queryparam.username" />
   <Password ref="request.queryparam.password" />
   <AssignTo createNew="false">request.header.Authorization</AssignTo>
   <Source>request.header.Authorization</Source> 
</BasicAuthentication>

<BasicAuthentication> attributes

<BasicAuthentication async="false" continueOnError="false" enabled="true" name="Basic-Authentication-1">

The following table describes attributes that are common to all policy parent elements:

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
name	The internal name of the policy. The value of the name attribute can contain letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens, underscores, and periods. This value cannot exceed 255 characters. Optionally, use the <DisplayName> element to label the policy in the management UI proxy editor with a different, natural-language name.	N/A	Required
continueOnError	Set to false to return an error when a policy fails. This is expected behavior for most policies. Set to true to have flow execution continue even after a policy fails. See also: Fault rules are triggered ONLY in an error state (about continueOnError) Handling faults within the current flow	false	Optional
enabled	Set to true to enforce the policy. Set to false to turn off the policy. The policy will not be enforced even if it remains attached to a flow.	true	Optional
async	This attribute is deprecated.	false	Deprecated

<DisplayName> element

Use in addition to the name attribute to label the policy in the management UI proxy editor with a different, natural-language name.

<DisplayName>Policy Display Name</DisplayName>

Default	N/A If you omit this element, the value of the policy's name attribute is used.
Presence	Optional
Type	String

<Operation> element

Determines whether the policy Base64 encodes or decodes credentials.

<Operation>Encode</Operation>

Default:	N/A
Presence:	Required
Type:	String. Valid values include: Encode Decode

<IgnoreUnresolvedVariables> element

When set to true, the policy will not throw an error if a variable cannot be resolved. When used in the context of a BasicAuthentication policy, this setting is usually set to false because it is generally beneficial to throw an error if a username or password cannot be found in the variables specified.

<IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>false</IgnoreUnresolvedVariables>

Default:	true
Presence:	Optional
Type:	Boolean

<User> element

• For encoding, use the <User> element to specify the variable containing the username. Username and password values are concatenated with a colon prior to Base64 encoding.
• For decoding, specify the variable where the decoded username is written.

<User ref="request.queryparam.username" /> 

Default:	N/A
Presence:	Required
Type:	N/A

Attributes

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
ref	The variable from which the policy dynamically reads the username (encode) or writes the username (decode).	N/A	Required

<Password> element

• For encoding, use the <Password> element to specify the variable containing the password.
• For decoding, specify the variable where the decoded password is written.

<Password ref="request.queryparam.password" />

Default:	N/A
Presence:	Required
Type:	N/A

Attributes

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
ref	The variable from which the policy dynamically reads the password (encode) or writes the password (decode).	N/A	Required

<AssignTo> element

Specifies the target variable to set with the encoded or decoded value generated by this policy.

The following example indicates that the policy should set the Authorization header of the message to the generated value:

<AssignTo createNew="false">request.header.Authorization</AssignTo>

Default:	N/A
Presence:	Required
Type:	String

Attributes

Attribute	Description	Default	Presence
createNew	Determines whether the policy should overwrite the variable if the variable is already set. When "false", the assignment to the variable occurs only if the variable is currently unset (null). When "true", the assignment to the variable always occurs. You typically set this attribute to "false" (the default).	false	Optional

<Source> element

For decoding, the variable containing the Base64 encoded string, in the form Basic Base64EncodedString. For example, specify request.header.Authorization, corresponding to the Authorization header.

<Source>request.header.Authorization</Source>

Default:	N/A
Presence:	Required for the Decode operation.
Type:	N/A

Flow variables

The following flow variable is set when the policy fails:

• BasicAuthentication.{policy_name}.failed (with a value of true)

Note: If you see variables called BasicAuthentication.{policy_name}.fault.cause and BasicAuthentication.{policy_name}.fault.name, they are not currently being used by Apigee.

Error reference

This section describes the fault codes and error messages that are returned and fault variables that are set by Apigee when this policy triggers an error. This information is important to know if you are developing fault rules to handle errors. To learn more, see What you need to know about policy errors and Handling faults.

Runtime errors

These errors can occur when the policy executes.

Fault code	HTTP status	Cause	Fix
steps.basicauthentication.InvalidBasicAuthenticationSource	500	On a decode when the incoming Base64 encoded string does not contain a valid value or the header is malformed (for example, does not start with Basic).
steps.basicauthentication.UnresolvedVariable	500	The required source variables for the decode or encode are not present. This error can only occur if IgnoreUnresolvedVariables is false.

Deployment errors

These errors can occur when you deploy a proxy containing this policy.

Error name	Occurs when	Fix
UserNameRequired	The <User> element must be present for the named operation.
PasswordRequired	The <Password> element must be present for the named operation.
AssignToRequired	The <AssignTo> element must be present for the named operation.
SourceRequired	The <Source> element must be present for the named operation.

Fault variables

These variables are set when a runtime error occurs. For more information, see What you need to know about policy errors.

Variables	Where	Example
fault.name="fault_name"	fault_name is the name of the fault, as listed in the Runtime errors table above. The fault name is the last part of the fault code.	fault.name Matches "UnresolvedVariable"
BasicAuthentication.policy_name.failed	policy_name is the user-specified name of the policy that threw the fault.	BasicAuthentication.BA-Authenticate.failed = true

Example error response

Note: For error handling, the best practice is to trap the errorcode part of the error response. Do not rely on the text in the faultstring, because it could change.

{  
   "fault":{  
      "detail":{  
         "errorcode":"steps.basicauthentication.UnresolvedVariable"
      },
      "faultstring":"Unresolved variable : request.queryparam.password"
   }
}

Example fault rule

<FaultRule name="Basic Authentication Faults">
    <Step>
        <Name>AM-UnresolvedVariable</Name>
        <Condition>(fault.name Matches "UnresolvedVariable") </Condition>
    </Step>
    <Step>
        <Name>AM-AuthFailedResponse</Name>
        <Condition>(fault.name = "InvalidBasicAuthenticationSource")</Condition>
    </Step>
    <Condition>(BasicAuthentication.BA-Authentication.failed = true) </Condition>
</FaultRule>

Schemas

Sample: See our GitHub repository samples for the most recent schemas.

Related topics

Key Value Map Operations policy