Table of contents
1.
Introduction
2.
Authorization Types
3.
Digest Auth
4.
Selecting Digest Auth
5.
Advanced Section Fields
6.
Frequently Asked Questions
6.1.
Describe Postman.
6.2.
What is an API?
6.3.
What is a collection?
6.4.
In POST methods, what does a binary form mean?
7.
Conclusion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Digest Auth in Postman

Author Nidhi Kumari
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Introduction

Hey Ninja!🥷You must have heard about authorization. Have you ever heard about authorization in Postman? Do you know about the types of authorization in postman? 

Digest Auth in Postman

Remembering all these different types of authorization is a challenging task. Don’t worry; Coding Ninjas have got you covered! We will discuss Digest Authentication in this article.

Authorization Types

In the authorization tab of Postman, we can easily find the type dropdown. This dropdown consists of various auth types. We can select an auth type for Collections, requests, or folders. The different types are as follows:

📌 API Key.

📌 Bearer Token.

📌 Basic Auth.

📌 Digest Auth.

📌 OAuth 1.0.

📌 OAuth 2.0.

📌 Hawk Authentication.

📌 AWS Signature.

📌 NTLM Authentication.

📌 Akamai EdgeGrid.

Let’s learn about Digest Auth in detail.

Digest Auth

Digest Auth

Authentication using digest auth follows the given steps:

🎯Step 1: The client sends the first request to the API using Digest auth.

🎯 Step 2: The server responds with a 401unauthorized error.

🎯 Step 3: The user sends back encrypted data with a username and password. The data from the previous response is also attached.

🎯 Step 4: The server generates an encrypted string.

🎯 Step 5: The server uses the string to compare the request.

🎯 Step 6: The correct auth response is sent back to the user.

Image

Selecting Digest Auth

We can follow some set of steps to select the digest auth. These steps are as follows:

📝 Step 1: Go to the authorization tab for request.

Selecting Digest Auth

📝 Step 2: From the Type dropdown list, select the Digest Auth.

Authorization drop down list

📝 Step 3: You will see a username-password pair.

📝 Step 4: The Advanced section in the second request is autocompleted. This process is done using the information obtained from the server by the first request.

📝 Step 5: Enter Username and Password values to allow Postman to automate the flow.

Authorization

Advanced Section Fields

Setting fields in the advanced section is optional. Postman will automatically fill the fields in the section when our first request is made. Now, let’s look at these fields one by one.

Advanced Section Fields

✨ Realm: The server's definition of a string in the WWW-Authenticate response header.

✨ Nonce: The server's definition of a unique string in the WWW-Authenticate response header.

✨ Nonce Count: The number of requests the client has sent that have included the nonce value in the request. It is of hexadecimal form.

✨ Client Nonce: A client-provided opaque quoted string value. It is utilised by the client and server to authenticate mutually.  It also protects against some plaintext attacks. 

✨ Algorithm: A string indicating the two algorithms utilized to create the digest and checksum. Postman supports algorithms MD5 and SHA.

✨ qop: qop stands for the level of protection given to the message. One of the possibilities listed by the server in the WWW-Authenticate response header must be the value.

✨Opaque: When used with URIs in the same protection area, the server will use an opaque string of data given by the server.

Frequently Asked Questions

Describe Postman.

The Postman is a very well-liked API testing tool that aids in creating, sharing, and testing an API. For skilled testers, it offers a command-line utility and a GUI interface to the API.

What is an API?

An API is a collection of protocols and development resources for software applications. APIs define how two software programs should communicate with one another.

What is a collection?

In Postman, a collection is used to group related requests. It aids in organising the requests into folders in a systematic manner.

In POST methods, what does a binary form mean?

The binary form is intended to assist in sending data in a format that cannot be manually typed. These options are used when submitting huge files, such as photos, CSV files, etc., in a POST request. The simplest encoding for sending complex data together with the request is binary.

Conclusion

We discussed Digest Auth in postman in detail. We have covered:

  • Authorization Types.
  • Digest Auth.
  • Selecting Digest Auth.
  • Advanced selection Fields.


We hope this blog has helped you. We recommend you to visit our articles on different topics of Postman, such as

🔥 How to install and set up postman

🔥 How to use postman

🔥 Take a look at the cheatsheet of Postman Commands

🔥 What are the assertions in Postman

You may also like our articles related to Web testing and APIs:

🔥 API

🔥 API Testing

🔥 Web Testing

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