Passing credentials for authentication to C# ASP.NET Web API

Question

I have setup an ASP.NET Web API. I want to dynamically validate the basic authentication provided (username and web access key) in the header and pass it to the network credentials method I have setup to validate details.

This is my model:

public class Customer
{
    public string No_;
    public string Name;
    public string AccountingLocation;
}

My controller:

public IHttpActionResult Get(string id)
{
    try
    {
            ws.ValidationRegWebService();
            Validation.Customer customerVal = new Validation.Customer();
            customerVal = ws.validationReg_ws.Read(id);
            [...]
     }
     [...]
 }

My network credential method:

public NetworkCredential Credential() 
{
   NetworkCredential cred = new NetworkCredential
   {
         UserName = globals.UserName,
         Password = globals.Password
    };
    return cred;
}

How can I pass the authorization details from the client to the network credential method?

Answer 1

In the method, you can get the basic auth header sent by postman like this:

var header = Request.Headers["Authorization"].FirstOrDefault();
if(header == null) throw UnauthorizedException(); // Not sure this exception exists I just made it up

Then decode it, as it simply contains username:password encoded in base64 prefixed with "Basic ":

var encodedValue = authHeader.Substring("Basic ".Length).Trim(); // Now just a b64 string
var decodedValue = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Convert.FromBase64String(encodedValue));
var values = decodedValue.Split(":");

var username = values[0];
var password = values[1];