javascript - PhantomJS doesn't send authentication header

Question

I'm trying to open a web page which requires HTTP authentication, in PhantomJS. My script is based off the loadspeed.js example:

var page = require('webpage').create(),
    t, address;
page.settings.userName = "user";
page.settings.password = "password";
if (phantom.args.length === 0) {
  console.log('Usage: loadspeed.js <some URL>');
  phantom.exit();
} else {
  t = Date.now();
  address = phantom.args[0];
  page.open(address, function (status) {
      if (status !== 'success') {
          console.log('FAIL to load the address');
      } else {
          t = Date.now() - t;
          console.log('Loading time ' + t + ' msec');
          page.render('page.jpg');
      }
      phantom.exit();
  });
}

I can see from the rendered page.jpg that I'm getting a 401 every time. I've also traced the HTTP session using Wireshark, which reveals that no authentication header is sent in the GET request to the given URL.

What am I doing wrong here? I'm just getting started with PhantomJS but I've been searching all evening and not gotten far...

Answer 1

PhantomJS (at least as of 1.9.0) has a bug with auth: it sends the request without the auth headers, and then only after it gets the 401 back does it do the request again but this time with the headers. (That is for GET; with POST it doesn't work at all.)

The workaround is simple, so instead of:

page.settings.userName = 'username';
page.settings.password = 'password';

you can use:

page.customHeaders={'Authorization': 'Basic '+btoa('username:password')};

(I just covered this in a blog post: http://darrendev.blogspot.jp/2013/04/phantomjs-post-auth-and-timeouts.html, and learnt that workaround on the PhantomJS mailing list from Igor Semenko.)