Base64 Authentication Python

python api authentication passwords request
Marcus picture Marcus · Aug 9, 2013 · Viewed 51.6k times · Source

I'm following an api and I need to use a Base64 authentication of my User Id and password.

'User ID and Password need to both be concatenated and then Base64 encoded'

it then shows the example

'userid:password'

It then proceeds to say 'Provide the encoded value in an "Authorization Header"'

'for example: Authorization: BASIC {Base64-encoded value}'

How do I write this into a python api request?

z = requests.post(url, data=zdata )

Thanks

Answer

Josh picture Josh · Feb 21, 2014

The requests library has Basic Auth support and will encode it for you automatically. You can test it out by running the following in a python repl

from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth
r = requests.post(api_URL, auth=HTTPBasicAuth('user', 'pass'), data=payload)

You can confirm this encoding by typing the following.

r.request.headers['Authorization']

outputs:

u'Basic c2RhZG1pbmlzdHJhdG9yOiFTRG0wMDY4'

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