NSURLConnection doesn't call NSURLConnectionDelegate authentication methods after an HTTP 401

Question

I'm consume a web service that uses HTTP basic auth with an NSURLConnection. In my NSURLConnectionDelegate, I implemented –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:canAuthenticateAgainstProtectionSpace:], –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:didCancelAuthenticationChallenge:], and –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:], but none of them get called.

I've tried implementing –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connectionShouldUseCredentialStorage:] to return both YES and NO, but that had no effect.

I also ensured that my NSURLCredentialStorage was empty.

Finally, instead of implementing –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:canAuthenticateAgainstProtectionSpace:], –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:didCancelAuthenticationChallenge:], and –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:], I implemented –[NSURLConnectionDelegate connection:willSendRequestForAuthenticationChallenge:], but it wasn't called either.

What can I do to make NSURLConnection call NSURLConnectionDelegate's authentication callbacks?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

My HTTP server isn't returning a WWW-Authenticate header.

My server's response:

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:43:30 GMT
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Expires: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:43:30 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, private, max-age=0
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/plain

Another server response with a WWW-Authenticate header:

HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:44:47 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.17 (CentOS)
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="[LDAP/PROD] Active Directory"
Content-Length: 0
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain

It looks like NSURLConnection requires the WWW-Authenticate header in its response for it to call NSURLConnectionDelegate's authentication callbacks.

I've filed a radar about this. Please duplicate it.

Apparently, I'll have to manually set the Authorization header since NSURLConnection will not allow you to proactively authenticate with NSURLCredential.

NSURLConnection doesn't call NSURLConnectionDelegate authentication methods after an HTTP 401

1 Answers1