Basic authentication for REST API using spring restTemplate

There are multiple ways to add the basic HTTP authentication to the RestTemplate.

1. For a single request

try {
    // request url
    String url = "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts";

    // create auth credentials
    String authStr = "username:password";
    String base64Creds = Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString(authStr.getBytes());

    // create headers
    HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
    headers.add("Authorization", "Basic " + base64Creds);

    // create request
    HttpEntity request = new HttpEntity(headers);

    // make a request
    ResponseEntity<String> response = new RestTemplate().exchange(url, HttpMethod.GET, request, String.class);

    // get JSON response
    String json = response.getBody();

} catch (Exception ex) {
    ex.printStackTrace();
}

If you are using Spring 5.1 or higher, it is no longer required to manually set the authorization header. Use headers.setBasicAuth() method instead:

// create headers
HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setBasicAuth("username", "password");

2. For a group of requests

@Service
public class RestService {

    private final RestTemplate restTemplate;

    public RestService(RestTemplateBuilder restTemplateBuilder) {
        this.restTemplate = restTemplateBuilder
                .basicAuthentication("username", "password")
                .build();
    }

   // use `restTemplate` instance here
}

3. For each and every request

@Bean
RestOperations restTemplateBuilder(RestTemplateBuilder restTemplateBuilder) {
    return restTemplateBuilder.basicAuthentication("username", "password").build();
}

I hope it helps!

Taken from the example on this site, I think this would be the most natural way of doing it, by filling in the header value and passing the header to the template.

This is to fill in the header Authorization:

String plainCreds = "willie:p@ssword";
byte[] plainCredsBytes = plainCreds.getBytes();
byte[] base64CredsBytes = Base64.encodeBase64(plainCredsBytes);
String base64Creds = new String(base64CredsBytes);

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.add("Authorization", "Basic " + base64Creds);

And this is to pass the header to the REST template:

HttpEntity<String> request = new HttpEntity<String>(headers);
ResponseEntity<Account> response = restTemplate.exchange(url, HttpMethod.GET, request, Account.class);
Account account = response.getBody();

You may use spring-boot RestTemplateBuilder

@Bean
RestOperations rest(RestTemplateBuilder restTemplateBuilder) {
    return restTemplateBuilder.basicAuthentication("user", "password").build();
}

See documentation

(before SB 2.1.0 it was #basicAuthorization)