Automatic Authentication

Sometimes, during traffic simulation, your tested web server may decline a simulated request. Instead of the expected response, it may return a 401 Unauthorized response. This indicates that the request tried to access a restricted resource, but no appropriate credentials were specified.

This can happen, for example, if:

• The behavior of your tested web server has changed. The resources, access to which used to be anonymous, are now protected and require authentication.

• You provided credentials before you started recording your scenarios. The requests that send the authentication data to your tested web server were not recorded. (That is why we recommend that you always start recording scenarios from launching your web browser and clearing the browser cache or activating its private mode. See Recording - Tips.)

LoadComplete can handle these unexpected 401 Unauthorized responses automatically. All you need to do is to specify the needed credentials in the Authentication table of your project:

During simulation, if an unexpected 401 Unauthorized response is received, LoadComplete will detect this, generate an authentication request using the credentials specified in the Authentication table for the server, and send it to the tested server:

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LoadComplete will also capture the successive response the server will return after the authentication is complete. If your recorded response includes any data selectors or validations, LoadComplete will apply them to the successive response rather than to the unexpected 401 Unauthorized response:

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By default, whenever LoadComplete detects an unexpected 401 Unauthorized response and sends an automatic authentication request, it posts a message about it to the Details test log. You can command LoadComplete to report automatic authentication as a warning or error, or to ignore such events at all. To do this, configure the Tools > Options > Simulating > Event Handling > Auto authorization option:

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