Basic Authentication

(Looking for a Linux solution? See Solution #3 below.)

If you try and visit a site that uses basic authentication, this is the box you will appear. This wont appear in any unit tests, and its difficult to show working code, as we need a site that is secure, and we would need to supply passwords etc.

Simplest Internet Explorer Solution that avoids AutoIt entirely

Instead of using

Watir::Browser.start "http://yoururl.com"

you use:

Watir::Browser.start "http://username:password@yoururl.com"

All you need to do is set two registry values to make IE6+ allow this. You can find the full details on how to do this on Alister Scott's blog post.

Solution #1

One way to handle this is using WindowHelper.rb. This script is basically just a wrapper around AutoIt to help you deal with pop ups. The following code to implements this in an example using Test::Unit. Also, since you frequently see the Security Alert dialog along with Basic Authentication, this example deals with this pop up as well. You will need to have two other files, handle_logon.rb and handle_security_alert.rb in the same directory as your main script. These scripts are launched in additional threads to deal with the Basic Authentication pop up and the Security Alert pop up.

One problem with this script is that if you leave the Security Alert pop up thread in-tact and the script does not encounter this dialog box, the script will hang waiting for a Security Alert pop up that will never happen. To correct this, simply remove variable b and the b.join statement from main.rb.

main.rb

require 'unittests/setup'
require 'watir'
require 'watir/WindowHelper'

class TC_Logon_Test < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def setup
    @url = 'yoursite.com'
    @login_title = "Connect to #{@url}"
    @username = 'uname'
    @password = 'pass'
  end

  def test_logon
    a = Thread.new {
      system("ruby handle_logon.rb \"#{@login_title}\" \"#{@username}\" \"#{@password}\"")
    }

    b = Thread.new {
      system('ruby handle_security_alert.rb')
    }

    $ie.goto(@url)

    a.join
    b.join

    # continue code here...

  end

end

handle_security_alert.rb

require 'watir'
require 'watir/WindowHelper'

helper = WindowHelper.new
helper.push_security_alert_yes
puts "done with security alert"

handle_logon.rb

require 'watir'
require 'watir/WindowHelper'

# these parameters are passed to the logon method in WindowHelper.rb
login_title = ARGV[0]
username = ARGV[1]
password = ARGV[2]

helper = WindowHelper.new
helper.logon(login_title, username, password)

Solution #2

Added 07/15/2008

Another solution that doesn't require launching new threads.

#if prompted about the security certificate use 'click_no_wait' to be able to deal with the popup
ie.link(:text, 'Continue to this website (not recommended).').click_no_wait

#use autoit to work with the authentication popup
Watir.autoit.WinWait('Connect to ')
Watir.autoit.Send('username')
Watir.autoit.Send('{TAB}')
Watir.autoit.Send('password')
Watir.autoit.Send('{ENTER}')

Solution #3

Added 05/27/2010

How to do Basic Authentication using FireWatir on Ubuntu Linux?

(This is basically a copy of the post I made to the stack overflow link above. Credits to Aedorn Varanis for the basic auth code)

This solution lets you create tests that work in both ruby+firewatir and jruby+celerity on Linux in Firefox. Instead of using firewatir or celerity directly, I created a simple "browser" class which takes care of handling basic authentication for both frameworks (via jssh in firewatir, and by just yielding to the built in support for basic auth in celerity).

Now you can visit basic auth sites in by doing something like:

require 'browser'
browser = Browser.new
browser.credentials = 'user:pass'
browser.goto('http://some.basic.auth.url')

Here's my browser.rb:

ENGINE = defined?(RUBY_ENGINE) ? RUBY_ENGINE : 'ruby'
if ENGINE == 'ruby'
  require 'firewatir'

  class Browser < FireWatir::Firefox

    def initialize(options={})
      super(options)
      @username = nil
      @password = nil
    end

    def credentials=(string)
      username, password = string.split(":")
      if username.nil? or password.nil?
        raise "Invalid credentials: #{string})"
      else
        @username = username
        @password = password
      end
    end

    def goto(url, wait=3)
      if @username.nil? and @password.nil?
        return super(url)
      else
        t = Thread.new { logon(@username, @password, wait) }
        result = super(url)
        t.join
        return result
      end
    end

    private

    def logon(username, password, wait)
      jssh_command = "
        var length = getWindows().length;
        var win;
        var found = false;
        for (var i = 0; i < length; i++) {
          win = getWindows()[i];
          if(win.document.title == \"Authentication Required\") {
            found = true;
            break;
          }
        }
        if (found) {
          var jsdocument = win.document;
          var dialog = jsdocument.getElementsByTagName(\"dialog\")[0];
          jsdocument.getElementsByTagName(\"textbox\")[0].value = \"#{username}\";
          jsdocument.getElementsByTagName(\"textbox\")[1].value = \"#{password}\";
          dialog.getButton(\"accept\").click();
        }
      \n"
      sleep(wait)
      $jssh_socket.send(jssh_command,0)
      read_socket()
    end
  end
elsif ENGINE == 'jruby'
  require 'celerity'
  class Browser < Celerity::Browser; end
else
  raise "Ruby ENGINE '#{ENGINE}' not supported."
end

Basic Authentication

Basic Authentication

Simplest Internet Explorer Solution that avoids AutoIt entirely

Solution #1

Solution #2

Solution #3

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