How to set the authorization header using cURL

Question

How do I pass authorization header using cURL? ( executable in /usr/bin/curl).

Inextricable

Answer 1

http://curl.se/docs/httpscripting.html

See part 6. HTTP Authentication

HTTP Authentication

HTTP Authentication is the ability to tell the server your username and password so that it can verify that you're allowed to do the request you're doing. The Basic authentication used in HTTP (which is the type curl uses by default) is plain text based, which means it sends username and password only slightly obfuscated, but still fully readable by anyone that sniffs on the network between you and the remote server.

To tell curl to use a user and password for authentication:

curl --user name:password http://www.example.com

The site might require a different authentication method (check the headers returned by the server), and then --ntlm, --digest, --negotiate or even --anyauth might be options that suit you.

Sometimes your HTTP access is only available through the use of a HTTP proxy. This seems to be especially common at various companies. A HTTP proxy may require its own user and password to allow the client to get through to the Internet. To specify those with curl, run something like:

curl --proxy-user proxyuser:proxypassword curl.haxx.se

If your proxy requires the authentication to be done using the NTLM method, use --proxy-ntlm, if it requires Digest use --proxy-digest.

If you use any one these user+password options but leave out the password part, curl will prompt for the password interactively.

Do note that when a program is run, its parameters might be possible to see when listing the running processes of the system. Thus, other users may be able to watch your passwords if you pass them as plain command line options. There are ways to circumvent this.

It is worth noting that while this is how HTTP Authentication works, very many web sites will not use this concept when they provide logins etc. See the Web Login chapter further below for more details on that.

Unrounded

@Vixed This question is explicitly not about PHP. [What's wrong with Google's results](s)? – Unrounded

The question is about Authorization not authentication, so maybe the OP should change the title of the question – Craigcraighead

Answer 2

Just adding so you don't have to click-through:

curl --user name:password http://www.example.com

or if you're trying to do send authentication for OAuth 2:

curl -H "Authorization: OAuth <ACCESS_TOKEN>" http://www.example.com

Hypanthium

Many API now use header authorization tokens. The -H option is great. – Coycoyle

If you use -u or --user, Curl will Encode the credentials into Base64 and produce a header like this: -H Authorization: Basic <Base64EncodedCredentials> – Voyageur

I'm trying to add an authorization header with HMAC-SHA256 always getting an error of missing authorization header – Gamut

Additionally, if you need the <Base64EncodedCredentials> as mentioned by @timothy-kansaki, you can get the encoded credential using the command: cred="$( echo $NAME:$PASSWORD | base64 )"; curl -H "Authorization: Basic $cred" https://example.com. For reference, see #16919102 – Teddy

@DavidGolembiowski by default echo will throw in a newline, at least on macs. As mentioned in your link, you'll want echo -n to prevent the newline from being included – Gradualism

... or better use creds="$(printf $NAME:$PASSWORD | base64)" – Diverting

Answer 3

Bearer tokens look like this:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>" http://www.example.com

Phytography

And if you're looking to do 'Basic' authorisation, just swap 'Bearer' for 'Basic' – Bobseine

I've got the strangest thing, I'm getting a "Wrong format of Authorization header" and "HTTP-200". So the server accepts my authorization, but the format is wrong? – Fourinhand

Answer 4

This worked for me:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" https://www.example.com/

Liris

what are you using for JWT ? – Wealth

Don't you mean Authorization: bearer xxxxxxxxx? – Loxodromic

@Loxodromic you mean Bearer – Charcoal

I was almost sure that it's case-insensitive, but it seems I'm wrong. Yes I meant Bearer. – Loxodromic

Answer 5

(for those who are looking for php-curl answer)

$service_url = 'https://example.com/something/something.json';
$curl = curl_init($service_url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "username:password"); //Your credentials goes here
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $curl_post_data);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); //IMP if the url has https and you don't want to verify source certificate

$curl_response = curl_exec($curl);
$response = json_decode($curl_response);
curl_close($curl);

var_dump($response);

Nonconformity

Answer 6

For HTTP Basic Auth:

curl -H "Authorization: Basic <_your_token_>" http://www.example.com

replace _your_token_ and the URL.

Roadbed

When using oauth where would the Authorization token come from? I am trying to use curl to download files from a site where I use a user and password but it seems to be failing due to oauth2 in use. – Runofthemine

@toasteez you have to go through the Oauth2 flow to receive a token. Typically its a two step process and should be detailed in the server's documentation. – Roadbed

good answer. a small helper echo -ne "<your-user>:<your-pass>" | base64 --wrap 0 will generate the basic auth token. – Councilman

@MikeD -H "Authorization: Basic <_your_token_>" does the same effect as --user login:password. You can check it with curl -v – Berndt

@Berndt my response is a helper for this answer. in my experience, it is better to understand how to create the token instead of relying on curl to generate it. – Councilman

Answer 7

Be careful that when you using: curl -H "Authorization: token_str" http://www.example.com

token_str and Authorization must be separated by white space, otherwise server-side will not get the HTTP_AUTHORIZATION environment.

Naker

Not true, if a white space is required, your HTTP server is broken. Also you need two strings a type and then the token. – Arhat

Answer 8

As of curl 7.61.0 you can use the --oauth2-bearer <token> option to set the correct Bearer authorization headers.

Marchpast

Answer 9

This example includes the following:

• POST request
• Header Content-Type
• Header Authorization
• Data flag with JSON data
• Base64 encoded token
• Ref-1: curl authorization header
• Ref-2: curl POST request

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name”:”Johnny B. Goode”, "email”:”[email protected]"}' -H "Authorization: Bearer $(echo -n  Guitar Maestro | base64)" https://url-address.com 

Depurative

Answer 10

If you don't have the token at the time of the call is made, You will have to make two calls, one to get the token and the other to extract the token form the response, pay attention to

grep token | cut -d, -f1 | cut -d\" -f4

as it is the part which is dealing with extracting the token from the response.

echo "Getting token response and extracting token"    
def token = sh (returnStdout: true, script: """
    curl -S -i -k -X POST https://www.example.com/getToken -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" -H \"Accept: application/json\" -d @requestFile.json | grep token | cut -d, -f1 | cut -d\\" -f4
""").split()

After extracting the token you can use the token to make subsequent calls as follows.

echo "Token : ${token[-1]}"       
echo "Making calls using token..."       
curl -S -i -k  -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer ${token[-1]}" https://www.example.com/api/resources 

Brythonic

Answer 11

FWIW, on Mac OS I've found that I need to surround the target url with quotes when it contains query parameters, e.g.,

curl -H "Authorization: Token xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" "https://www.example.com/?param=myparam"

Outflank

what tool i can use to get base64 string, can I just use any online tool ? like https://www.base64encode.org/? – Commonweal

Answer 12

The below worked for me

curl -H "Authorization: Token xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" https://www.example.com/

Card

Answer 13

For those doing Token-Based authentication ... make sure you do :

curl -H "AuthToken: "

instead !!

Dentiform

Answer 14

A simple example is using parameters with authorization converted to base64

curl -XPOST 'http://exemplo.com/webhooks?Authorization=Basic%20dGVzdDoxMjM0NTYK'

Byelection