How to use OAuth2 in RestSharp

Question

After a couple of days sorting out OAuth2 at the server-end (Spring java) I started working on the client written in C#. I am using RestSharp to call my web API but I am having real difficulty with the OAuth2. There is hardly any documentation and the few examples I found online do not work. Can someone provide me a code sample that is up to date and that I can use?

So far I have the following:

var client = new RestClient("http://example.com/myapi/oauth/token");
RestRequest request = new RestRequest() { Method = Method.POST };

request.AddHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
request.AddParameter("grant_type", "client_credentials");
request.AddParameter("client_id", "client-app");
request.AddParameter("client_secret", "secret");

var response = client.Execute(request);

I am simply running this code in debug mode and when I look into the response I get unauthorized.

When I do curl on the console with the same parameters it works fine but it seems I can't make this to work in C#. Here is the curl command:

curl -H "Accept: application/json" client-app:[email protected]/myapi/oauth/token -d grant_type=client_credentials

By the way, I have replaced my true API urls and other information with placeholders.

Solution 1

See RFC 6749 - 4.4.2. Client Credentials - Access Token Request

Here is the basic format of the request

POST /token HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com
Authorization: Basic czZCaGRSa3F0MzpnWDFmQmF0M2JW
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

grant_type=client_credentials

Your cURL request

curl -H "Accept: application/json" \
     -d grant_type=client_credentials \
     client-app:[email protected]/myapi/oauth/token 

The reason your cURL command works

1. Default Content-Type (if not specified) with POST (default when you use -d switch) is application/x-www-form-urlencoded

2. Default authentication type, if not specified, is Basic. The username and password are passed either through the -u option or in the URL

    -u username:password (client-app:secret)
   
    -- or put it in the url --
   
    client-app:[email protected]/myapi/oauth/token
   

   You could also specify the auth type with --basic or --digest

You can use the -v switch in your cURL command to see all the headers involved in the request.

RestSharp fix:

1. Set the Content-Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded

2. Add the Basic authentication

    client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator("client-app", "secret");
   

3. Get rid of

    request.AddParameter("client_id", "client-app");
    request.AddParameter("client_secret", "secret");
   

4. Set the Accept header to application/json

Solution 2

I am able to get both of the following functions worked.

 public RestClient getClient2(string user, string token)
    {
        RestClient client = new RestClient();
        client.BaseUrl = new Uri(baseUrl);
        client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator(user, token);                
        //client.Authenticator = new OAuth2UriQueryParameterAuthenticator(token); //works
        //client.Authenticator = new OAuth2AuthorizationRequestHeaderAuthenticator(token); // doesn't work

        return client;
    }

  public GitHubUser GetGitHubUser2()
    {
        RestRequest request = new RestRequest();        
        request.Resource = "/users/huj";
        request.RootElement = "GitHubUser";

        RestClient client = getClient2(myUser, myToken);

        return Execute<GitHubUser>(client, request);        
    }


    /// <summary>
    /// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30133937/how-to-use-oauth2-in-restsharp
    /// </summary>
    /// <returns>GitHubUser</returns>
    public GitHubUser GetGitHubUser3()
    {
        //RestRequest request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);  //empty data
        RestRequest request = new RestRequest();
        request.AddHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
        request.AddHeader("Accept", "application/json");
        request.AddParameter("grant_type", "client_credentials");

        request.Resource = "/users/huj";
        request.RootElement = "GitHubUser";

        RestClient client = getClient2(myUser, myToken);

        return Execute<GitHubUser>(client, request);
    }

Comments

[Dimitris]

Thanks, no wonder you have 47K points. This worked like a dream. Now I need to figure out how to refresh the access token when I need to.

[Dasith Wijes]

What's the difference between the SimpleAuthenticator and HttpBasicAuthenticator? Also is base64 encoding done internally?

[Jitender Kumar]

Thanks for the solution, it has made my day :)