Automation Guide Action-based testing language Built-in actions System actions Web services

 authenticate

authenticate

Description

Specify an HTTP authentication scheme and its information before working with web services. The user must be authenticated to the services.

Arguments

• scheme

  HTTP authentication scheme

  Possible values:

  • basic: Basic HTTP authentication.
  • oauth 2: OAuth 2.0
  • digest: Digest authentication.

• value

  HTTP authentication information (see Notes)

Valid contexts

This action may be used within the following project items: test modules and user-defined actions.

Notes

• You are required to declare this built-in action before the authentication is started. Additionally, this built-in action can also be declared after or before the declaration of create http request.
• value argument: Depends on which authentication scheme is selected, there are different ways to provide HTTP authentication information.

  1. For Basic HTTP authentication scheme: Specify username and password to authenticate with the service you are using. Follow this format userid:password.

     Tip: 
     You can either input a plain text string or a base64url encoded string. To encode a text string into a base64url encoded string, you can use the Online Base64URL encoder tool.

     For example: username is John and password is Doe.

     • Plain text string: John:Doe
     • Base64url encoded string: Sm9objpEb2U

  2. For OAuth 2.0 scheme: Specifying an access token which is required to access OAuth protected resources. For example: ya29.Ci-fA76X0cjJXa2Lx0RM-fRyAQ6-6pboEX-iuT7PR-yYV6D-Rfbos7bs151wiL-O7w

  3. For Digest authentication scheme: Specify two fields including username and password to authenticate with the service you are using. Follow this format username:password.

• This action supports the <ignore> modifier. If the string <ignore> is present as the value of any of the arguments, or any argument contains an expression that evaluates to <ignore>, the action is skipped during execution.

Applicable Built-In Settings

The following settings are applicable to this action: remove double quotes from cells.

Example 1 - Basic authentication scheme

Suppose that you’d like to test the a given API based on the following information:

• Authentication scheme: Basic authentication
• Web service under test: http://192.168.190.212:8091/api/authenticate``
• Username: john.doe
• Password: R6z,nUjeH];3L4r:

Action Lines

Example 2 - OAuth 2.0 authentication scheme

Suppose that you’d like to test a given Gmail API to get all messages based on the following information:

• Authentication scheme: OAuth 2.0

• Web service under test: Users.messages: get

• Access token: ya29.Ci-fA76X0cjJXa2Lx0RM-fRyAQ6-6pboEX-iuT7PR-yYV6D

  Tip: 
  For Google APIs in order to retrieve the access token for OAuth 2.0, read here.

Action Lines

Example 3 - Digest authentication scheme

Suppose that you’d like to test a given API based on the following information:

• Authentication scheme: Digest authentication
• Web service under test: http://192.168.190.212:8091/api/authenticate``
• Username: john.doe
• Password: 123

Action Lines

Related concepts

Testing web services