Invoke-WebRequest API error 401 (Unauthorized)

Christian Thurow

Dear community, 

I'm having trouble connecting to my companies Jira server using a powershell script and the Invoke-WebRequest commandlet.

I'm using the following script. Note that I'm getting the same error with any valid URI to this Jira server. While the same user can access all these URI's through a webbrowser just fine.

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

$baseUrl = "https://MyDomain.atlassian.net"
$jql = "%22Epic Link%22 = SD-2"

$user = 'USER@MyDomain.com'
$pass = 'TheCorrectPassword'

$pair = "$($user):$($pass)"

$encodedCreds = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($pair))

$basicAuthValue = "Basic $encodedCreds"

$authHeader = @{
Authorization = $basicAuthValue
}

Invoke-WebRequest -uri $($baseUrl + "/rest/api/latest/search?jql=$jql") -Headers $authHeader -UseBasicParsing -ErrorAction Stop -Verbose

Output from powershell:

Invoke-WebRequest : The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.
At \Work\JiraAccess2.ps1:22 char:1
+ Invoke-WebRequest -uri $($baseUrl + "/rest/api/latest/search?jql=$jql ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (System.Net.HttpWebRequest:HttpWebRequest) [Invoke-WebRequest], WebExc
eption
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletWebResponseException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand

Could there be a setting on the Jira Server that prevents this user from connecting via "Invoke-WebRequest"? Or is something wrong with my script?

Edit: I'm using the cloud version.

Andy Heinzer

Hi Christian,

I see that you're using powershell in order to try to connect to the Jira Cloud REST API, but that you're getting a 401 authorization error.  Thanks for posting your code here, I think I see the problem.

The way you're converting the password appears to be calling the ASCII encoding of the text.  However we're actually expecting UTF-8 to be used here when converting.  We have a sample of this for powershell over in Basic auth for REST APIs.

$Text = ‘user@example.com:api_token_string’
$Bytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($Text)
$EncodedText = [Convert]::ToBase64String($Bytes)
$EncodedText

I'm betting that using the ASCII encoding here is actually generating a different character string when encoded into base64.  In turn your encoded credentials are incorrect here and Jira is throwing a 401 error.  Try using this example as a base and see if you have any better success here. 

Let me know the results.

Andy