How to set an authorisation header?

[andreasvirkus]

Hi. I'm most likely getting something very basic wrong, but I can't put my finger on it.
I've got a JWT token that I'd like to set for my requests but superagent's set doesn't seem to work. Currently I get the following error:

TypeError: _endpoints2.default.pages(...).set is not a function

How would I go about setting the token? I saw headers in the docs, would that be it (and does it take an Object or something else)? Is there a way to set it for all requests by default (a custom transport maybe)?

import wp from './endpoints'; // I just export a new WPAPI() with some custom endpoints
import AuthService from './AuthenticationService';

let token = '';

AuthService.getAccessToken().then(webToken => {
    token = webToken;
});

export const getPages = () => wp.pages()
  .set('Authorization', 'Bearer ' + token)
  // .headers('Authorization', 'Bearer ' + token)  // How would the headers() format look?
  .param('per_page', '80')
  .then(response => {
    return response;
  }).catch(err => {
    console.log('ERR! Could not retrieve pages:', err);
  });

[andreasvirkus]

I found an example of .headers() from https://github.com/auth0/wp-jwt-auth/issues/1#issuecomment-268075628 and tried it out:

wp.pages()
  .param('per_page', '80')
  .headers({ authorization: 'Bearer ' + token })
  .then(...);

But the type of the request performed is now HEAD instead of GET, so the response body is missing.
In comparison, I've added a request for a custom endpoint where I didn't set the headers (remains of type GET)

HEAD /wp-json/wp/v2/pages?per_page=80 HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:1234
User-Agent: node-superagent/3.5.2
Connection: close

GET /wp-json/wp-api-menus/v2/menu-locations/primary HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:1234
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: node-superagent/3.5.2
Connection: close

Edit: The auth headers aren't included in the request.

Edit 2: Seems I misunderstood the purpose of .headers() the first time around and it's there to perform HEAD requests. So my original question stands that how could I use the underlying superagent's .set() method to sign my requests with a token? I also tried adding https://github.com/rojo2/superagent-auth-bearer but just like .set(), it told me that
TypeError: _endpoints2.default.pages(...).param(...).authBearer is not a function
Is there a way for me to expose superagent somehow or apply a workaround?

[mzalewski]

I haven't really been keeping up with development, but you could look at creating a new HTTP Transport:
https://github.com/mzalewski/wpapi-oauth-example-transport

From memory, there's no easy way to set the headers. This may have changed recently though.

[mzalewski]

Alternatively, look at this pull request: #299
It's definitely cleaner than a new transport, but you'll have to use the forked version (until the pull request is merged)

[andreasvirkus]

Excellent, thank you so much for pointing me towards that PR, @mzalewski. And sorry for hunting you down like that 😄

[mzalewski]

No problem, happy to help - let me know if you have any issues

[andreasvirkus]

@mzalewski Gonna poke you once more... Does it matter if I assign the JWT to the WP
instance:

const WP = new WPAPI({
  endpoint: process.env.WP_ENDPOINT,
  jwt: token
});

or if I attach it to every request (since I might not have it when creating the instance):

wp.pages()
  .param('per_page', '80')
  .auth({ jwt: token })
  .then(response => {
    return response;
  });

on Wordpress side I can't see any Authorization headers attached when I do
apache_request_headers()

[kadamwhite]

Hey y'all, apologies for letting this sit so long without response. We're evaluating supporting JWT natively but I will also be working on an update that includes a new method to set the headers to use on your request, which should make third-party support for JWT and other header-based authentication schemes much easier. I'll drop the PR link here for comments once I have something ready

[mzalewski]

That's great news 👍

@andreasvirkus I wouldn't think that you'd need to set it instance-wide - I haven't really tested it out though, so that's just based on my quick look at the pull request.

[kadamwhite]

@mzalewski @andreasvirkus I've proposed a system for specifying custom headers in pull request #315 and I would welcome your feedback on the implementation and interface.