Connect to an Axis 1 Web Service with Basic Authentication

Recently we had to integrate one of our .NET applications with an Axis Web Service using basic authentication over an https connection.

In order to connect to the Web Service and pass the username and password for the basic authentication, we needed to build a proxy for the service and add the authentication header manually. The code for the proxy class is listed bellow. It simply overrides the GetWebRequest method of the service and adds the credentials encoded in base64.

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 class ProjectRepositoryProxy : ProjectRepositoryServiceSoapService
  {
    protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
    {
      HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)base.GetWebRequest(uri);
      request.PreAuthenticate = true;
      request.Headers.Add("Authorization: Basic " + EncodeCredentialsToB64((NetworkCredential)Request.Credentials));
      return request;
    }
    static private string EncodeCredentialsToB64(NetworkCredential credentials)
    {
      byte[] toEncodeAsBytes
        = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(credentials.UserName + ":" + credentials.Password);
      string returnValue
        = System.Convert.ToBase64String(toEncodeAsBytes);
      return returnValue;
    }

Calling a method of the web service, requires setting the Credentials property of the web service to an instance of NetworkCredentials with username and password.

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  ProjectRepositoryProxy service = new ProjectRepositoryProxy();
service.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("user","pass");
string   response = service.getModifiedProjects();

Another tip that might prove useful when working with web services over https connections, is how to override certificate validation in case you have problems with it during development phase. For this you must simply register a Callback that validates the certificate like in the code bellow.

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 ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback += new System.Net.Security.RemoteCertificateValidationCallback(customXertificateValidation);
...
 private static bool customXertificateValidation(object sender, System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate cert, System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Chain chain, System.Net.Security.SslPolicyErrors error)
        {
            return true;
        }

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