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Basic Authentication

Basic authentication is a very simple authentication scheme that is built into the HTTP protocol. The client sends HTTP requests with the Authorization header that contains the Basic word followed by a space and a base64-encoded username:password string. For example, a header containing the demo / p@55w0rd credentials would be encoded as:

Authorization: Basic ZGVtbzpwQDU1dzByZA==

Note: Because base64 is easily decoded, Basic authentication should only be used together with other security mechanisms such as HTTPS/SSL.

Basic authentication is easy to define. In the global securityDefinitions section, add an entry with type: basic and an arbitrary name (in this example - basicAuth). Then, apply security to the whole API or specific operations by using the security section.

securityDefinitions:
  basicAuth:
    type: basic


# To apply Basic auth to the whole API:
security:
  - basicAuth: []


paths:
  /something:
    get:
      # To apply Basic auth to an individual operation:
      security:
        - basicAuth: []
      responses:
        200:
          description: OK (successfully authenticated)

401 Response

Section titled “401 Response”

You can also define the 401 “Unauthorized” response returned for requests with missing or incorrect credentials. This response includes the WWW-Authenticate header, which you may want to mention. As with other common responses, the 401 response can be defined in the global responses section and referenced from multiple operations.

paths:
  /something:
    get:
      ...
      responses:
        ...
        401:
            $ref: '#/responses/UnauthorizedError'
    post:
      ...
      responses:
        ...
        401:
          $ref: '#/responses/UnauthorizedError'
responses:
  UnauthorizedError:
    description: Authentication information is missing or invalid
    headers:
      WWW_Authenticate:
        type: string

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