UIWebView resource loading with Basic Authentication - uiwebview

Question

For a (web)application I am creating, I need to use Basic Authentication to load pages in my UIWebView.
Now to set the authorization header I use:
NSString *result = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#:%#", username, password];
NSData *resultData = [result dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSString *result64 = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Basic %#", [resultData base64Encoding]];
[request setValue:result64 forHTTPHeaderField:#"Authorization"];
In my apache access logs I can see the login is a success. But then the UIWebView wants to load the resources like style.css and jquery.min.js but requests to these resources fail because they have no Authorization header set. How can I fix this?

Answer 1

The solution was to subclass NSURLProtocol to authenticate the resource loading:
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import "AuthenticationUtils.h"
#interface CustomURLProtocol : NSURLProtocol <NSURLConnectionDelegate>
{
NSMutableURLRequest *_customRequest;
NSURLConnection *_connection;
}
#end
#implementation CustomURLProtocol
static NSString *AUTHORIZED_REQUEST_HEADER = #"X-AUTHORIZED";
+(BOOL) canInitWithRequest:(NSMutableURLRequest *)request
{
// check if the request is one you want to authorize
BOOL canInit = (![request.URL.scheme isEqualToString:#"file"] && [request valueForHTTPHeaderField:[AUTHORIZED_REQUEST_HEADER stringByAppendingString:[request.URL absoluteString]]] == nil);
return canInit;
}
-(id) initWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request cachedResponse:(NSCachedURLResponse *)cachedResponse client:(id<NSURLProtocolClient>)client
{
_customRequest = [request mutableCopy];
[_customRequest setValue:#"" forHTTPHeaderField:[AUTHORIZED_REQUEST_HEADER stringByAppendingString:[request.URL absoluteString]]];
self = [super initWithRequest:_customRequest cachedResponse:cachedResponse client:client];
return self;
}
+(NSURLRequest *) canonicalRequestForRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request
{
NSMutableURLRequest *customRequest = [request mutableCopy];
[customRequest setValue:#"" forHTTPHeaderField:[AUTHORIZED_REQUEST_HEADER stringByAppendingString:[request.URL absoluteString]]];
NSString *basicAuthentication = [AuthenticationUtils getBasicAuthentication];
[customRequest setValue:basicAuthentication forHTTPHeaderField:#"Authorization"];
return customRequest;
}
- (void) startLoading
{
NSString *basicAuthentication = [AuthenticationUtils getBasicAuthentication];
[_customRequest setValue:basicAuthentication forHTTPHeaderField:#"Authorization"];
_connection = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:_customRequest delegate:self];
}
- (void) stopLoading
{
[_connection cancel];
}
#pragma mark - NSURLConnectionDelegate
-(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response
{
// This protocol forgets to store cookies, so do it manually
if([redirectResponse isKindOfClass:[NSHTTPURLResponse class]])
{
[[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] setCookies:[NSHTTPCookie cookiesWithResponseHeaderFields:[(NSHTTPURLResponse*)redirectResponse allHeaderFields] forURL:[redirectResponse URL]] forURL:[redirectResponse URL] mainDocumentURL:[request mainDocumentURL]];
}
[[self client] URLProtocol:self didReceiveResponse:response cacheStoragePolicy:NSURLCacheStorageNotAllowed];
}
- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data
{
[[self client] URLProtocol:self didLoadData:data];
}
- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error
{
[[self client] URLProtocol:self didFailWithError:error];
}
-(void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection
{
[[self client] URLProtocolDidFinishLoading:self];
}
-(NSURLRequest *) connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection willSendRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request redirectResponse:(NSURLResponse *)redirectResponse
{
// This protocol forgets to store cookies, so do it manually
if([redirectResponse isKindOfClass:[NSHTTPURLResponse class]])
{
[[NSHTTPCookieStorage sharedHTTPCookieStorage] setCookies:[NSHTTPCookie cookiesWithResponseHeaderFields:[(NSHTTPURLResponse*)redirectResponse allHeaderFields] forURL:[redirectResponse URL]] forURL:[redirectResponse URL] mainDocumentURL:[request mainDocumentURL]];
}
// copy all headers to the new request
NSMutableURLRequest *redirect = [request mutableCopy];
for (NSString *header in [request allHTTPHeaderFields])
{
[redirect setValue:[[request allHTTPHeaderFields] objectForKey:header] forHTTPHeaderField:header];
}
return redirect;
}
#end
And in your AppDelegate add this:
[NSURLProtocol registerClass:[CustomURLProtocol class]];