2011-02-13-api-technology--basic-auth.html

---
layout: post
title: 'API Technology - Basic Auth'
url: 'http://apievangelist.com/2011/02/13/api-technology-basic-auth/'
image: ''
---



<img class="c1" src="http://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/basic-auth.png" alt="" width="250" align="right" />Basic Auth is a way for a web browser or application to provide credentials in the form of a username and password.
<p></p>Because Basic Auth is integrated into <a class="zem_slink" title="Hypertext Transfer Protocol" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol">HTTP protocol</a> it is the easiest way for users to authenticate with a <a class="zem_slink" title="Representational State Transfer" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer">RESTful API</a>.
<p></p>Basic Auth is easily integrated, however if <a class="zem_slink" title="Transport Layer Security" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security">SSL</a> is not used, the username and password are passed in plain text and can be easily intercepted on the open Internet.
<p></p>OAuth is a much better choice for RESTful API authentication, but Basic Auth is perfectly suited for APIs that are intended for a wider audience and do not give access to sensitive information.
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