NSURLConnection and Basic HTTP Authentication in iOS

I'm using an asynchronous connection with MGTwitterEngine and it sets the authorization in the NSMutableURLRequest (theRequest) like so:

NSString *authStr = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@:%@", [self username], [self password]];
NSData *authData = [authStr dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSString *authValue = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Basic %@", [authData base64EncodingWithLineLength:80]];
[theRequest setValue:authValue forHTTPHeaderField:@"Authorization"];

I don't believe this method requires going through the challenge loop but I could be wrong

Even the question is answered, I want to present the solution, which doesn't require external libs, I found in another thread:

// Setup NSURLConnection
NSURL *URL = [NSURL URLWithString:url];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:URL
                                         cachePolicy:NSURLRequestUseProtocolCachePolicy
                                     timeoutInterval:30.0];

NSURLConnection *connection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
[connection start];
[connection release];

// NSURLConnection Delegates
- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge {
    if ([challenge previousFailureCount] == 0) {
        NSLog(@"received authentication challenge");
        NSURLCredential *newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:@"USER"
                                                                    password:@"PASSWORD"
                                                                 persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession];
        NSLog(@"credential created");
        [[challenge sender] useCredential:newCredential forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
        NSLog(@"responded to authentication challenge");    
    }
    else {
        NSLog(@"previous authentication failure");
    }
}

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response {
    ...
}

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data {
    ...
}

- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection {
    ...
}

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error {
    ...
}

Here is a detailed answer with no 3rd party involved:

Please check here:

//username and password value
NSString *username = @“your_username”;
NSString *password = @“your_password”;

//HTTP Basic Authentication
NSString *authenticationString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@:%@", username, password]];
NSData *authenticationData = [authenticationString dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
NSString *authenticationValue = [authenticationData base64Encoding];

//Set up your request
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.your-api.com/“]];

// Set your user login credentials
[request setValue:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Basic %@", authenticationValue] forHTTPHeaderField:@"Authorization"];

// Send your request asynchronously
[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:request queue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue] completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *responseCode, NSData *responseData, NSError *responseError) {
      if ([responseData length] > 0 && responseError == nil){
            //logic here
      }else if ([responseData length] == 0 && responseError == nil){
             NSLog(@"data error: %@", responseError);
             UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:nil message:@"Error accessing the data" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"Close" otherButtonTitles:nil];
             [alert show];
             [alert release];
      }else if (responseError != nil && responseError.code == NSURLErrorTimedOut){
             NSLog(@"data timeout: %@”, NSURLErrorTimedOut);
             UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:nil message:@"connection timeout" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"Close" otherButtonTitles:nil];
             [alert show];
             [alert release];
      }else if (responseError != nil){
             NSLog(@"data download error: %@”,responseError);
             UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:nil message:@"data download error" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"Close" otherButtonTitles:nil];
             [alert show];
             [alert release];
      }
}]

Kindly let me know your feedback on this.

Thanks

If you don't want to import the whole of MGTwitterEngine and you aren't doing an asynchronous request Then you can use http://www.chrisumbel.com/article/basic_authentication_iphone_cocoa_touch

To base64 encode the Username and password So replace

NSString *authValue = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Basic %@", [authData base64EncodingWithLineLength:80]];

with

NSString *encodedLoginData = [Base64 encode:[loginString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];

after

you will need to include the following file

static char *alphabet = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/";

@implementation Base64
+(NSString *)encode:(NSData *)plainText {
    int encodedLength = (((([plainText length] % 3) + [plainText length]) / 3) * 4) + 1;
    unsigned char *outputBuffer = malloc(encodedLength);
    unsigned char *inputBuffer = (unsigned char *)[plainText bytes];

    NSInteger i;
    NSInteger j = 0;
    int remain;

    for(i = 0; i < [plainText length]; i += 3) {
        remain = [plainText length] - i;

        outputBuffer[j++] = alphabet[(inputBuffer[i] & 0xFC) >> 2];
        outputBuffer[j++] = alphabet[((inputBuffer[i] & 0x03) << 4) | 
                                     ((remain > 1) ? ((inputBuffer[i + 1] & 0xF0) >> 4): 0)];

        if(remain > 1)
            outputBuffer[j++] = alphabet[((inputBuffer[i + 1] & 0x0F) << 2)
                                         | ((remain > 2) ? ((inputBuffer[i + 2] & 0xC0) >> 6) : 0)];
        else 
            outputBuffer[j++] = '=';

        if(remain > 2)
            outputBuffer[j++] = alphabet[inputBuffer[i + 2] & 0x3F];
        else
            outputBuffer[j++] = '=';            
    }

    outputBuffer[j] = 0;

    NSString *result = [NSString stringWithCString:outputBuffer length:strlen(outputBuffer)];
    free(outputBuffer);

    return result;
}
@end