ios - AFNetworking NTLM Authentication?

Question

I am banging my head trying to get AFNetworking to work since this is my first app that had to deal with Client/Server where I am trying to grab the JSON from a HTTPS server that requires a username/password. I got it somewhat hooked up to the app, but it keeps throwing a 401 Error which I looked it up to be Basic Authentication issue.

I basically took the twitter example from AFNetworking and adapted it to my project. In the subclass of the AFHTTPClient, I am adding another line in the initWithBaseURL and it still throws the error. The line I am adding is the setAuthorizationHeaderWithUsername

- (id)initWithBaseURL:(NSURL *)url {
self = [super initWithBaseURL:url];
if (!self) {
    return nil;
}

[self registerHTTPOperationClass:[AFJSONRequestOperation class]];

// Accept HTTP Header; see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.1
[self setDefaultHeader:@"Accept" value:@"application/json"];
[self setAuthorizationHeaderWithUsername:@"myusername" password:@"my password"];

return self;
}

Answer 1

If you're trying to use NTLM authentication with AFNetworking you could try the following:

AFNetworking does support NTLM authentication (or basically any authentication method) by providing a block-based response to authentication challenges in general.

Here's a code example (assuming operation is a AFHTTPRequestOperation, AFJSONRequestOperation etc.). Before starting the operation set the authentication challenge block like this:

[operation setAuthenticationChallengeBlock:
 ^( NSURLConnection* connection, NSURLAuthenticationChallenge* challenge )
{
   if( [[challenge protectionSpace] authenticationMethod] == NSURLAuthenticationMethodNTLM )
   {
      if( [challenge previousFailureCount] > 0 )
      {
         // Avoid too many failed authentication attempts which could lock out the user
         [[challenge sender] cancelAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
      }
      else
      {
         [[challenge sender] useCredential:[NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:@"username" password:@"password" persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession] forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
      }
   }
   else
   {
      // Authenticate in other ways than NTLM if desired or cancel the auth like this:
      [[challenge sender] cancelAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
   }
}];

Start or enqueue the operation as usual and that should do the trick.

This is basically the method Wayne Hartman describes in his blog applied to AFNetworking.