Implementing basic authentication on a simple HTTP server

Once you have created the HTTP server then you probably want to restrict resources from being accessed by a specific user, such as the administrator of an application. If so, then you can implement basic authentication on an HTTP server, which we will be covering in this recipe.

Getting ready

As we have already created an HTTP server in our previous recipe, we will just extend it to incorporate basic authentication.

How to do it…

In this recipe, we are going to update the HTTP server we created in the previous recipe by adding a BasicAuth function and modifying the HandleFunc to call it. Perform the following steps:

1. Create http-server-basic-authentication.go and copy the following content:

package main
import 
(
  "crypto/subtle"
  "fmt"
  "log"
  "net/http"
)
const 
(
  CONN_HOST = "localhost"
  CONN_PORT = "8080"
  ADMIN_USER = "admin"
  ADMIN_PASSWORD = "admin"
)
func helloWorld(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) 
{
  fmt.Fprintf(w, "Hello World!")
}
func BasicAuth(handler http.HandlerFunc, realm string) http.HandlerFunc {
  return func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) 
  {
    user, pass, ok := r.BasicAuth()
    if !ok || subtle.ConstantTimeCompare([]byte(user),
    []byte(ADMIN_USER)) != 1||subtle.ConstantTimeCompare([]byte(pass), 
    []byte(ADMIN_PASSWORD)) != 1 
    {
      w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", `Basic realm="`+realm+`"`)
      w.WriteHeader(401)
      w.Write([]byte("You are Unauthorized to access the
      application.\n"))
      return
    }
    handler(w, r)
  }
}
func main() 
{
  http.HandleFunc("/", BasicAuth(helloWorld, "Please enter your
  username and password"))
  err := http.ListenAndServe(CONN_HOST+":"+CONN_PORT, nil)
  if err != nil 
  {
    log.Fatal("error starting http server : ", err)
    return
  }
}

2. Run the program with the following command:

$ go run http-server-basic-authentication.go

How it works…

Once we run the program, the HTTP server will start locally listening on port 8080.

Once the server starts, accessing http://localhost:8080 in a browser will prompt you to enter a username and password. Providing it as admin, admin respectively will render Hello World! on the screen, and for every other combination of username and password it will render You are Unauthorized to access the application.

To access the server from the command line we have to provide the --user flag as part of the curl command, as follows:

$ curl --user admin:admin http://localhost:8080/
Hello World!

We can also access the server using a base64 encoded token of username:password, which we can get from any website, such as https://www.base64encode.org/, and pass it as an authorization header in the curl command, as follows:

$ curl -i -H 'Authorization:Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' http://localhost:8080/

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 12:02:51 GMT
Content-Length: 12
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Hello World!

Let’s understand the change we introduced as part of this recipe:

• The import function adds an additional package, crypto/subtle, which we will use to compare the username and password from the user's entered credentials.
• Using the const function we defined two additional constants, ADMIN_USER and ADMIN_PASSWORD, which we will use while authenticating the user.
• Next, we declared a BasicAuth() method, which accepts two input parameters—a handler, which executes after the user is successfully authenticated, and realm, which returns HandlerFunc, as follows:

func BasicAuth(handler http.HandlerFunc, realm string) http.HandlerFunc 
{
  return func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request)
  {
    user, pass, ok := r.BasicAuth()
    if !ok || subtle.ConstantTimeCompare([]byte(user),
    []byte(ADMIN_USER)) != 1||subtle.ConstantTimeCompare
    ([]byte(pass),
    []byte(ADMIN_PASSWORD)) != 1
    {
      w.Header().Set("WWW-Authenticate", `Basic realm="`+realm+`"`)
      w.WriteHeader(401)
      w.Write([]byte("Unauthorized.\n"))
      return
    }
    handler(w, r)
  }
}

In the preceding handler, we first get the username and password provided in the request's authorization header using r.BasicAuth() then compare it to the constants declared in the program. If credentials match, then it returns the handler, otherwise it sets WWW-Authenticate along with a status code of 401 and writes You are Unauthorized to access the application on an HTTP response stream.

Finally, we introduced a change in the main() method to call BasicAuth from HandleFunc, as follows:

http.HandleFunc("/", BasicAuth(helloWorld, "Please enter your username and password"))

We just pass a BasicAuth handler instead of nil or DefaultServeMux for handling all incoming requests with the URL pattern as /.