This plugin adds Basic Authentication to a WordPress site.

Note that this plugin requires sending your username and password with every request, and should only be used for development and testing. We strongly recommend using the [OAuth 1.0a][oauth] authentication handler for production.

1. Download the plugin into your plugins directory
2. Enable in the WordPress admin

This plugin adds support for Basic Authentication, as specified in [RFC2617][]. Most HTTP clients will allow you to use this authentication natively. Some examples are listed below.

curl --user admin:password http://example.com/wp-json/

wp_remote_request(
    'http://example.com/wp-json',
     array(
     	'headers' => array(
     		'Authorization' => 'Basic ' . base64_encode( $username . ':' . $password ),
     	),
     )
);

If you are communicating with a webserver using CGI or Fast-CGI (FCGI) then the HTTP Authorization header is blocked by default, which prevents this plugin from successfully authenticating your requests.

On this fork of the WP API Basic Auth plugin, you can instead pass the "Authorization" data in the query string variable _authorization. (On the original version of the WP API Basic Auth pluing, you instead need to do a more complicated fix involving modifying the .htaccess file.) Here are some examples of how to use this version of the Basic Auth plugin authenticating through the query string.

curl --user admin:password http://example.com/wp-json/?_authorization=Basic base64encodedusernameandpassword

where base64encodedusernameandpassword is the user's username, a colon, and their password concatenated together and theenn base 64 encoded.

wp_remote_request(
    'http://example.com/wp-json?_authorization=Basic ' . base64_encode( $username . ':' . $password ),
     array()
);