Restkit 0.20 basic operation

Question

I am just getting started with RestKit and have arrived just as Rk 0.20 is going live and the documentation and demo's are a step behind. Most stuff on the web is for RK 0.10 and there are big changes in the 0.20 version.

I don't want to fall back to an earlier version when the new one will very soon be up and running.

I have a JSON resource at a URL "test.myserver.com" that returns a simple datagram - { "id_user": "4401", "datalocation": "4401", "country": "Great-Britain", "data": "testdata", "login": "Fred Bloggs", "password": "579c0cb0ed2dc25db121283f7a98cc71", "accessLevel": "2", "timestamp": "1012", "datahash": "2749da29f20ce7a85092323f193adee8" }

I am pretty sure I have the Mappings etc sorted but my service requires authentication so I need to pass a user name and password in the request to the server.

I have got this so far

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://test.myserver.com"];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
RKObjectRequestOperation *objectRequestOperation = [[RKObjectRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:request responseDescriptors:@[ responseDescriptor ]];

[objectRequestOperation setCompletionBlockWithSuccess:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, RKMappingResult *mappingResult) {
RKLogInfo(@"Load collection of Articles: %@", mappingResult.array);
} failure:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {
RKLogError(@"Operation failed with error: %@", error);
}];

         [objectRequestOperation start];

Which appears to contact the server but inevitably logs the following error

restkit.network:RKObjectRequestOperation.m:296 Object request failed: Underlying HTTP request operation failed with error: Error Domain=org.restkit.RestKit.ErrorDomain Code=-1011 "Expected status code in (200-299), got 401" UserInfo=0x7884030 {NSLocalizedRecoverySuggestion={ "error": { "code": 401, "message": "Unauthorized: Authentication required" } }, AFNetworkingOperationFailingURLRequestErrorKey=http://elancovision.umfundi.com>, NSErrorFailingURLKey=http://elancovision.umfundi.com, NSLocalizedDescription=Expected status code in (200-299), got 401, AFNetworkingOperationFailingURLResponseErrorKey=}

The question of course is how I add the user name and password into the request.

Sorry for the noob question!

Answer 1

With basic HTTP authentication, username and password should be inserted into the HTTP request authorization header field for each request.

First, I suggest you to use RKObjectManager to centralize configuration for requests and mappings. http://restkit.org/api/latest/Classes/RKObjectManager.html RKObjectManager can store network parameters (through AFNetworking Library), then build appropriate http query based on username/password, paths, objectmapping.

Adapting your example, it would give something like :

NSURL* url = [[NSURL alloc]initWithString:@"http://test.myserver.com"];
RKObjectManager* objectManager = [RKObjectManager managerWithBaseURL:url];
[objectManager.HTTPClient setAuthorizationHeaderWithUsername:@"username" password:@"password"];

//NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
NSURLRequest *request = [objectManager requestWithObject:nil method:RKRequestMethodGET path:@"/yourAPI/yourmethod" parameters:nil];

RKObjectRequestOperation *objectRequestOperation = [[RKObjectRequestOperation alloc] initWithRequest:request responseDescriptors:@[ responseDescriptor ]];

[objectRequestOperation setCompletionBlockWithSuccess:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, RKMappingResult *mappingResult) {
        RKLogInfo(@"Load collection of Articles: %@", mappingResult.array);
    } failure:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error) {
        RKLogError(@"Operation failed with error: %@", error);
    }];

[objectRequestOperation start];

If authentication works, having a look at the RESTKit wiki should give you the next hints to build correct mappings : https://github.com/RestKit/RestKit/wiki/Object-mapping

Answer 2

My solution here:

// Build a RestKit manager object to look after the restful stuff
RKObjectManager *manager =  [RKObjectManager managerWithBaseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://test.myserver.com"]];;

// Hash the GUI input password string and pass the username in plain text
NSString *md5PW = [umfundiCommon md5:passwordField.text];           
[manager.HTTPClient setAuthorizationHeaderWithUsername:userField.text password:md5PW];

RKObjectMapping *WebResponse = [RKObjectMapping mappingForClass:[WSObject class]];

        [WebResponse addAttributeMappingsFromDictionary:@{@"id_user":@"id_user", @"datalocation": @"datalocation", @"country":@"country", @"data": @"data", @"login": @"login", @"password": @"password", @"accessLevel": @"accessLevel", @"timestamp": @"timestamp", @"datahash": @"datahash"}];

RKResponseDescriptor *responseDescriptor = [RKResponseDescriptor responseDescriptorWithMapping:WebResponse pathPattern:nil keyPath:nil statusCodes:RKStatusCodeIndexSetForClass(RKStatusCodeClassSuccessful)];
// Add the above response descriptor to the manager
[manager addResponseDescriptor:responseDescriptor];

// the getObject makes the call using the stuff assembled into the manager Object and drops into either the success or the failure routines.
[manager getObject:nil path:@"" parameters:nil success:^(RKObjectRequestOperation *operation, RKMappingResult *result)
{
NSLog (@"Server WS call success:");

NSArray *theresults = [result array];              
for (WSObject *item in theresults) {
    NSLog(@"datahash=%@",item.datahash);
    NSLog(@"user_id=%@",item.id_user);
    }
}  failure:^(RKObjectRequestOperation * operation, NSError * error)
    {
    NSLog (@"Server WS call failure: operation: %@ \n\nerror: %@", operation, error);
    }];

........