Using basic authentication

In general a web service takes in an HTTP request, processes it and sends a response.

Steps

1. Take in an HTTP request using a From HTTPS channel component
2. Parse the request into a Lua table using net.http.parseRequest{}
3. Authenticate the user and password
   1. If authentication fails use net.http.respond{} to send a 401 (or other error) and then return (taking no further action)
   2. If authentication is successful continue to the next step
4. Process the parsed request
5. Optional: Take some action based on the processing
6. Send a response using net.http.respond{}

Example

Try it now: Get the current date and time, username = admin and password = password.

This example of an authorized web service is as simple as we could make it! We just take in a request, using HTTP basic authentication, and then we return the current date and time. It’s implemented using a single channel set up with From HTTPS –> To Channel.

To run the example

1. Create a From HTTPS –> To Channel channel
2. Set the Source > Use Translator to “Translator”
3. Then set the “Source>URL path” to “current_time”, and note the web link that is created
   Note: The port number will be different from that used for Iguana
4. Load the project from this zip file Current_Date_and_Time_From_HTTPS.zip into the From HTTPS script
5. Use the URL from step 3 to access the web service

How the example works

The raw HTTP request data comes into the main() function and we do the following:

1. Use queue.push{data=Data} to log the incoming data.
   Note: This gives us a record of all requests. Also we can import test data from the logs into the Translator, so we can develop and test using real requests.
2. Use net.http.parseRequest{data=Data} to parse the incoming HTTP request into a table object which gives us easy access to all the headers, cookies, post and get variables.
3. We authenticate the user and password using the auth.BasicAuthentication() function.