401 Unauthorized when sending ajax request to web api

Question

I've been scratching my head at this for 2 days now. I am using WebAPI version 2.2 and I am using CORS. This setup works on the server side, I am allowed to get authorized content from my web client server code but getting unauthorized in my ajax calls.

Here is my configuration:

Web API Config

WebApiConfig:

public static class WebApiConfig
{
    public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
    {

        // Web API configuration and services
        // Configure Web API to use only bearer token authentication.
        config.SuppressDefaultHostAuthentication();
        config.Filters.Add(new HostAuthenticationFilter(OAuthDefaults.AuthenticationType));
        config.Filters.Add(new HostAuthenticationFilter(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie));

        //enable cors
        config.EnableCors();

        // Web API routes
        config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();

        config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
            name: "DefaultApi",
            routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
            defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
        );

        config.Filters.Add(new ValidationActionFilter());
    }
}

Startup.Auth.cs:

// Configure the db context and user manager to use a single instance per request
        app.CreatePerOwinContext(UserContext<ApplicationUser>.Create);
        app.CreatePerOwinContext<ApplicationUserManager>(ApplicationUserManager.Create);

        // Enable the application to use a cookie to store information for the signed in user
        // and to use a cookie to temporarily store information about a user logging in with a third party login provider
        app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions
            {
                AuthenticationType = DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie,
                CookieHttpOnly = true,
                CookieName = "Outpour.Api.Auth"
            }
        );

        //app.UseCors(CorsOptions.AllowAll);
        //app.UseExternalSignInCookie(DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ExternalCookie);

        // Configure the application for OAuth based flow
        PublicClientId = "self";
        OAuthOptions = new OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions
        {
            TokenEndpointPath = new PathString("/Token"),
            Provider = new ApplicationOAuthProvider(PublicClientId),
            AuthorizeEndpointPath = new PathString("/api/Account/ExternalLogin"),
            AccessTokenExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromDays(14),
            AllowInsecureHttp = true
        };

        // Enable the application to use bearer tokens to authenticate users
        app.UseOAuthBearerTokens(OAuthOptions);

(I've tried every combination of app.UseCors(CorsOptions.AllowAll) and config.EnableCors())

My Controller attribute:

[Authorize]
[EnableCors("http://localhost:8080", "*", "*", SupportsCredentials = true)]
[RoutePrefix("api/videos")]
public class VideosController : ApiController...

Web Client

Ajax Call:

$.ajaxPrefilter(function (options, originalOptions, jqXHR) {
            options.crossDomain = {
                crossDomain: true
            };
            options.xhrFields = {
                withCredentials: true
            };
        });

        function ajaxGetVideoResolutionList() {
            var request = {
                type: "GET",
                dataType: "json",
                timeout: Outpour.ajaxTimeOut,
                url: Outpour.apiRoot + "/videos/resolutions"
            };
            $.ajax(request).done(onAjaxSuccess).fail(onAjaxError);

Cookie Creation:

var result = await WebApiService.Instance.AuthenticateAsync<SignInResult>(model.Email, model.Password);

            FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(result.AccessToken, model.RememberMe);

            var claims = new[]
            {
                new Claim(ClaimTypes.Name, result.UserName), //Name is the default name claim type, and UserName is the one known also in Web API.
                new Claim(ClaimTypes.NameIdentifier, result.UserName) //If you want to use User.Identity.GetUserId in Web API, you need a NameIdentifier claim.
            };

            var authTicket = new AuthenticationTicket(new ClaimsIdentity(claims, DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie), new AuthenticationProperties
            {
                ExpiresUtc = result.Expires,
                IsPersistent = model.RememberMe,
                IssuedUtc = result.Issued,
                RedirectUri = redirectUrl
            });

            byte[] userData = DataSerializers.Ticket.Serialize(authTicket);

            byte[] protectedData = MachineKey.Protect(userData, new[] { "Microsoft.Owin.Security.Cookies.CookieAuthenticationMiddleware", DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie, "v1" });

            string protectedText = TextEncodings.Base64Url.Encode(protectedData);

            Response.Cookies.Add(new HttpCookie("Outpour.Api.Auth")
            {
                HttpOnly = true,
                Expires = result.Expires.UtcDateTime,
                Value = protectedText
            });

And last but not least, my headers.

Remote Address:127.0.0.1:8888
Request URL:http://127.0.0.1/api/videos/resolutions
Request Method:GET
Status Code:401 Unauthorized

**Request Headersview source**
Accept:application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01
Accept-Encoding:gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
Cache-Control:no-cache
Host:127.0.0.1
Origin:http://localhost:8080
Pragma:no-cache
Proxy-Connection:keep-alive
Referer:http://localhost:8080/video/upload
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.124 Safari/537.36

**Response Headersview source**
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials:true
Access-Control-Allow-Origin:http://localhost:8080
Cache-Control:no-cache
Content-Length:61
Content-Type:application/json; charset=utf-8
Date:Wed, 08 Oct 2014 04:01:19 GMT
Expires:-1
Pragma:no-cache
Server:Microsoft-IIS/8.0
WWW-Authenticate:Bearer
X-AspNet-Version:4.0.30319
X-Powered-By:ASP.NET

Developer tools and fiddler claim there were no cookies sent with the request.

Taiseer Joudeh Taiseer Joudeh · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-21T20:50:23

I believe you are mixing between cookies authentication and bearer tokens here, you are not sending an access token in the Authorization header with your request, that is why you keep getting 401. As well you need only to allow CORS using application.UseCors(Microsoft.Owin.Cors.CorsOptions.AllowAll); and remove it else where from your controllers attribute even from configuration.

Check my Repo here where I've implemented CORS and the front end is AngularJS too. it is working correctly. Here is the live demo too for this repo, open developer tools and monitor the requests, you should see pre-flight request before you see your HTTP get request.

If you need just to protect your API using bearer tokens then I recommend you to read Token Based Authentication post

401 Unauthorized when sending ajax request to web api

2 Answers