Hands-On Network Programming with C# and .NET Core

The authorization header

If you've ever used your browser tools to inspect an outbound request to a website you've logged on to, you will likely have noticed, in the request header segment of your network inspector, a header titled Authorization. This standard header in the HTTP protocol can be used to specify a variety of schemes used to authenticate and authorize a user to access content at the requested URL. If you're not familiar with it, though, you might be surprised at the sheer variety of options at your disposal for providing those basic functions in your software. So, let's look at what those authorization schemes are and how we can use them in our own projects.