Basic authentication failed but email address: API token succeed

[Pak Yu]

I was following this instruction to use curl to retrieve JIRA issues  (https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/software/jira-rest-api-basic-authentication/ ).

I was able to use -u "email_adrres:API_token"  (return with JSON data ) but I was not able to use Basic authentication (401 error).  I used the  decoded "email_adrres:API_token" with basic 64

[Andy Heinzer · Accepted solution]

You cited the Jira Server documentation, but your question is tagged with a Jira-cloud question.  This is confusing, because the documentation for one platform does not always apply exactly to the other.  If you're using Jira Cloud, then I would recommend trying to follow the steps in https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/software/jira-rest-api-basic-authentication/ instead.

If this doesn't help, could you let us know more about which way you're trying to make this REST call? (using curl, postman, or some other utility for examples)  I would be interested to see the specific syntax you are trying to use here if you're using curl for example.

[Pak Yu]

Thanks for pointing that out. However, in this case the command is the same with curl (Linux). I was trying to use basic auth headers method.

I first encode the email_address:API_token with this command (on linux):

openssl enc -base64 <<< "myusername@email.com:API token"

then I use this curl command ( the below command is just the example from the doc)  :

curl -D- \
   -X GET \
   -H "Authorization: Basic ZnJlZDpmcmVk" \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   "https://your-domain.atlassian.net/rest/api/2/issue/QA-31"

 Then I got the 401 error.

However, I am able to get the JSON data when i use this command:

curl -D- \
   -u myusername@email.com:api_token \
   -X GET \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \    
   "https://your-domain.atlassian.net/rest/api/2/issue/QA-31"

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Pak,

Thanks for letting me know the steps you are taking here.  I think I can see the problem now.   The method you are using to encode the string is known to include an additional carriage return.   Check out this comment https://superuser.com/questions/120796/how-to-encode-base64-via-command-line/133253#133253

From that thread:

Openssl can be used more succinctly:

echo -n 'input' | openssl base64

[ echo -n -> must be used, or encoding will be done including new line character ]

I tried this in my own command line.  I noticed that when I use the steps you followed (and when I excluded the '-n' parameter from this method), I got an additional 4 characters on the end of my encoded string.  However when I used the command line statement of:

echo -n 'user@example.com:apitokenstring' | openssl base64

The encoded string was 4 characters shorter than with your steps or without the -n.  It looks like the carriage return is getting added to your string and in turn throwing off the string.

I hope this helps.

Andy

[Pak Yu]

Thanks, Andy. It works. I wouldn't have thought of that .

[vishal mantri]

Using the VBScript, can you please let us know how to perform the Basic authentication