If we do window.location = "http://MyApi.com/Pdf";, browser does a GET of the URL http://MyApi.com/Pdf. But if we want to set authentication header of the request before doing GET of the URL because the server is a REST server and it doesn't support cookies. How to do this?
In all of the cases, I'm using $.ajax to call service but this time I need to show the response in a new window. Response is a PDF file content.
Thanks in advance.
In more recent browsers, you might be able to use blobs:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<button onclick="tryit();">PDF</button>
<script>
function tryit() {
var win = window.open('_blank');
downloadFile('/pdf', function(blob) {
var url = URL.createObjectURL(blob);
win.location = url;
});
}
function downloadFile(url, success) {
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', url, true);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + btoa("username:password"));
xhr.responseType = "blob";
xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (xhr.readyState == 4) {
if (success) success(xhr.response);
}
};
xhr.send(null);
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
In IE, ask the user:
window.navigator.msSaveOrOpenBlob(blob, 'readme.pdf');
P.S. You can test the backend in Node:
router.get('/pdf', function(req, res) {
if(req.headers.authorization !== 'Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=') return res.status(403).send('Not allowed');
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'public', 'render.pdf'));
});
router.get('/', function(req, res) {
res.render('index');
});
I think this is what you are looking for... Or correct me if i am wrong.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Setting_HTTP_request_headers
If you don't care about hiding or obfuscating the user credentials then just use plain GET authentification:
use http://username:[email protected]/ instead of http://MyApi.com/
authorization header looks something like CompanyNameToken <hashOfToken>. I wouldn't mind including the token in the URL if there is some quirk possible like this one.Does it have to be a GET?
The reason I am asking is that you could just have a POST form (to a target="_BLANK") that posts whatever but shows an embedded file in a new window. Of course this wouldn't solve the issue with your custom headers, but then since you can also POST using jquery.ajax - which does allow you to set your own headers - you'd have the best of both worlds.
Here's a jQuery plugin that creates such a form dynamically in order to download whichever file. You could use this as a reference...
Hope this helps
You may consider setting the header in beforeunload or onunload event handler
You should configure $.ajax using beforeSend. Below an example, but of course I don't know if the exact setup will work for you without any code to look at.
$.ajax( {
url : '/model/user.json',
dataType : 'json',
'beforeSend' : function(xhr) {
var bytes = Crypto.charenc.Binary.stringToBytes(username + ":" + password);
var base64 = Crypto.util.bytesToBase64(bytes);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + base64);
},
error : function(xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError) {
reset();
onError('Invalid username or password. Please try again.');
$('#loginform #user_login').focus();
},
success : function(model) {
cookies();
...
}
});
For this to work you need crypto-js.
beforeSend to set the header for all ajax request.