# SOAP + HTTP Authentication

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 27, 2005, 7:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893 "2005-12-27T07:43:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nodrew)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2005, 7:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893/1 "2005-12-27T07:43:27Z")

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Hey,

Just had a question. Been pulling out my hair all weekend trying to get  
SOAP  
to work properly in Rails and even straight on Ruby. I started with  
Rails’  
AWS and moved to Ruby’s internal libraries, after which I tried out  
SOAP4R.

Now, my question is, does Rails or even Ruby itself support SOAP client  
calls through basic HTTP Authentication? From the research I’ve done,  
this  
is an unsupported feature. I am however not willing to give up on this  
yet  
until I get some input from people who are definitely more experienced  
than  
myself.

If anyone has done this or knows a good article or tutorial, or even  
reference in a manual (so I can RTFM) please let me know. I’ve got a  
client  
who is looking to do this I and I need to make for 100% certain that  
this is  
possible to do, as it is a critical component of the application  
interface.

Thanks in advance,

~Drew

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**Author:** ![nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nodrew)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 2:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893/2 "2006-02-05T14:04:21Z")

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On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 08:58:21PM +0900, NAKAMURA, Hiroshi wrote:

> soap4r supports BasicAuth. cf.`  
> [http://dev.ctor.org/soap4r/browser/trunk/sample/soap/basicauth](http://dev.ctor.org/soap4r/browser/trunk/sample/soap/basicauth) .  
> Unfortunately I don’t know how to do it with AWS client. Someone?

Well, if you have installed http-access2 it actually does basic auth.

Oliver

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**Author:** ![nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nodrew)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2006, 1:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893/3 "2006-02-05T13:01:01Z")

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Hi,

Sorry for late reply.

Drew B. wrote:

> Now, my question is, does Rails or even Ruby itself support SOAP client  
> calls through basic HTTP Authentication? From the research I’ve done,  
> this  
> is an unsupported feature. I am however not willing to give up on this  
> yet  
> until I get some input from people who are definitely more experienced  
> than  
> myself.

soap4r supports BasicAuth. cf.`  
[http://dev.ctor.org/soap4r/browser/trunk/sample/soap/basicauth](http://dev.ctor.org/soap4r/browser/trunk/sample/soap/basicauth) .  
Unfortunately I don’t know how to do it with AWS client. Someone?

Regards,  
// NaHi  
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**Author:** ![nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nodrew)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 4:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893/4 "2006-02-17T16:47:26Z")

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Yeah, I ended up discovering http-access2 a little while back. It  
defintely  
does work using this method. I wish there had been some more  
documentation  
out there pointing me in this direction. Luckily though some old posts  
in  
ruby-talk had allowed me the insite that Soap4r will automatically  
detect if  
http-access2 is installed and with the proper othions added, it will  
login  
to a server for you.

Thanks for the help though.

Now I just have to figure out why the soap outputted is slightly  
different  
between rails and a plain ruby script. The main issue I’m seeing now is  
that  
a particular Soap server that I’m working with is dependant on the order  
that variables is passed in, rather than the names themselves.

When I script through Ruby itself, it will pass the variables properly,  
when  
I run this same script through a Rails front-end however, the variables  
get  
flipped. This means:

\<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?\>

\<env:Envelope xmlns:xsd=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema)”  
xmlns:env=“[http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/](http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/)”  
xmlns:xsi=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance)”\>  
env:Body  
  
InventoryItem  
@customer =‘BIELUM’  
  
\</env:Body\>  
\</env:Envelope\>

becomes:

\<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?\>

\<env:Envelope xmlns:xsd=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema)”  
xmlns:env=“[http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/](http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/)”  
xmlns:xsi=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance)”\>  
env:Body  
  
@customer =‘BIELUM’  
InventoryItem  
  
\</env:Body\>  
\</env:Envelope\>

I’m currently working with the provider of this service to understand  
why  
they’re order dependant, when the variables are different, but am unsure  
why  
there is a difference between the outputs of soap4r depending on how the  
script is run, even though NOTHING has changed between the two. They  
both  
are run through the same objects created by wsdl2ruby …

Any thoughts ?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@nodrew](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nodrew)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soap-http-authentication/76893/5 "2006-02-17T17:54:07Z")

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Just a quick follow up. I just noticed that it appears that Soap4r is  
sorting the variable:

@@schema\_element = [  
[“in0”, “SOAP::SOAPString”],  
[“in1”, “SOAP::SOAPString”],  
[“in3”, “SOAP::SOAPString”],  
[“in2”, “SOAP::SOAPString”],  
]

The Soap it outputs is:

\<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?\>

\<env:Envelope xmlns:xsd=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema)”  
xmlns:env=“[http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/](http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/)”  
xmlns:xsi=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance)”\>  
env:Body  
  
@customer =‘BIELUM’  
in2  
in3  
InventoryItem  
  
\</env:Body\>  
\</env:Envelope\>

Which tells me that there is some sort of Array sorting occuring here.  
Now  
note, if run in just ruby, this same code becomes:

\<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?\>

\<env:Envelope xmlns:xsd=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema)”  
xmlns:env=“[http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/](http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/)”  
xmlns:xsi=“[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance)”\>  
env:Body  
  
in3  
InventoryItem  
@customer =‘BIELUM’  
in2  
  
\</env:Body\>  
\</env:Envelope\>

Either way, we’re seeing very strange behavior. It almost appears as if  
the  
array is being sorted then pushed or flipped … I’ve been looking  
through  
the Rails API, looking for a possible extension done to the sort array  
methods, but have been unable to find one. Either way, my question now  
is,  
can I just turn off sorting? Can it just use the order I specify in the  
@@schema\_element class property ?

Thanks, I’ll also be directing this directly to the Soap4r site as well.  
Hopefully someone out there, who is more experienced with this object  
than  
I, will be able to help out.

~Drew

On 2/17/06, Drew B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Thanks for the help though.  
> get  
>   
> \</env:Body\>  
> \</env:Envelope\>
> 
> becomes:

\<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?\>