add request header on backbone

Models in Backbone retrieve, update, and destroy data using the methods fetch, save, and destroy. These methods delegate the actual request portion to Backbone.sync. Under the hood, all Backbone.sync is doing is creating an ajax request using jQuery. In order to incorporate your Basic HTTP authentication you have a couple of options.

fetch, save, and destroy all accept an additional parameter [options]. These [options] are simply a dictionary of jQuery request options that get included into jQuery ajax call that is made. This means you can easily define a simple method which appends the authentication:

sendAuthentication = function (xhr) {
  var user = "myusername";// your actual username
  var pass = "mypassword";// your actual password
  var token = user.concat(":", pass);
  xhr.setRequestHeader('Authorization', ("Basic ".concat(btoa(token))));
}

And include it in each fetch, save, and destroy call you make. Like so:

 fetch({
  beforeSend: sendAuthentication 
 });

This can create quite a bit of repetition. Another option could be to override the Backbone.sync method, copy the original code and just include the beforeSend option into each jQuery ajax request that is made.

Hope this helps!

The easiest way to add request header in Backbone.js is to just pass them over to the fetch method as parameters, e.g.

MyCollection.fetch( { headers: {'Authorization' :'Basic USERNAME:PASSWORD'} } );

One option might be to use the jQuery ajaxSetup, All Backbone requests will eventually use the underlying jQuery ajax. The benefit of this approach is that you only have to add it one place.

$.ajaxSetup({
    headers: { 'Authorization' :'Basic USERNAME:PASSWORD' }
});

Edit 2nd Jan 2018 For complex web applications this may not be the best approach, see comments below. Leaving the answer here for references sake.

You could override Backbone sync method.

#coffeescript
_sync = Backbone.sync
Backbone.sync = (method, model, options) ->
    options.beforeSend = (xhr) ->
        xhr.setRequestHeader('X-Auth-Token_or_other_header' , your_hash_key)
        #make sure your server accepts X-Auth-Token_or_other_header!!
    #calling the original sync function so we only overriding what we need
    _sync.call( this, method, model, options )

Backbone.$.ajaxSetup({
    headers: {'Authorization' :'Basic USERNAME:PASSWORD'}
});

This code set headers to Backbone ajax, so they will be sent with every Backbone.sync. You will be able to send headers without using xhr.setRequestHeader with every sync call.

So you don't need to do the following every time:

MyCollection.fetch({ headers: {'Authorization' :'Basic USERNAME:PASSWORD'} } );

You can just do

MyCollection.fetch();

Maybe it's kind of hack but it works perfectly for my system.

add request header on backbone

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