I'm stuck trying to understand a "Missing authorization header" error
when I try to access a VMware SOAP service using Ruby.

First I fetched the wsdl from our Lab Manager machine to my local
machine and ran wsdl2ruby.rb. It generated a bunch of files that I,
being new to SOAP, don't really understand. I copied some code from
the generated sample client and cut it back to a simple "list
configurations" call. First it complained about "certificate verify
failed", so I disabled certificate checking for the moment via this
line.

obj.optionshttp://'protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_mode' =
OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

I'll get back to certificates later (I tell myself), but now I've
"missing authorization header" error. I haven't edited any of the
generated code. I believe the namespace is "http://vmware.com/
labmanager", but lines like this

SOAPAction: "http://vmware.com/labmanager/ListConfigurations"

make nervous. I found a class called AuthenticationHeader, but I can't
figure out how/where to use it. The C# examples indicate the
AuthenticationHeader should be part of the driver object.

//**
//** Allocate AuthenticationHeader object to hold caller’s
//** username and password
//**
binding.AuthenticationHeaderValue = new
LabManagerSoap.AuthenticationHeader();

But I can't figure out how to translate that to the Ruby code
generated by wsdl2ruby.rb.

Here's the program...

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rubygems'
gem 'soap4r'
require 'defaultDriver.rb' #generated by wsdl2ruby.rb
endpoint_url = nil
obj = VMware_interfaceSoap.new(endpoint_url)
obj.wiredump_dev = STDOUT #print all requests/repsonses to stdout

obj.optionshttp://'protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_mode' =
OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE #disable certificate checking
puts obj.listConfigurations(nil)

Here's the request/response trace.

= Request

! CONNECT TO x.y.com:443
! CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
at depth 0 - 20: unable to get local issuer certificate
POST /LabManager/SOAP/LabManager.asmx HTTP/1.1
SOAPAction: "http://vmware.com/labmanager/ListConfigurations"
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
User-Agent: SOAP4R/1.5.8 (/187, ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24) http://universal-darwin9.0)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:44:50 GMT
Content-Length: 373
Host: x.y.com

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<env:Body>
<n1:ListConfigurations xmlns:n1="http://vmware.com/labmanager"
xsi:nil="true"></n1:ListConfigurations>
</env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

= Response

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:47:29 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 370

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><soap:Envelope
xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/
XMLSchema"><soap:Body><soap:Fault><faultcode>soap:Client</
faultcode><faultstring>Missing authorization header</
faultstring><detail /></soap:Fault></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

: Missing authorization header (SOAP::FaultError)

I learned that I needed to create a header-handler.
Here's the code that got past the missing authorization header
problem...
require 'rubygems'
gem 'soap4r'
require 'defaultDriver.rb'
require 'soap/header/simplehandler'

class ClientAuthHeaderHandler < SOAP::Header::SimpleHandler
        def initialize(userid, passwd)
                namespace = "http://vmware.com/labmanager"
                headername = "AuthenticationHeader"
                header = XSD::QName.new(namespace, headername)
                super(header)
                @sessionid = nil
                @userid = userid
                @passwd = passwd
                @mustunderstand = true
        end
        def on_simple_outbound
                if @sessionid
                  { "sessionid" => @sessionid }
                else
                        { "username" => @userid, "password" => @passwd }
                end
        end
        def on_simple_inbound(my_header, mustunderstand)
                @sessionid = my_header["sessionid"]
        end
end

endpoint_url = nil
obj = VMware_interfaceSoap.new(endpoint_url)
obj.wiredump_dev = STDOUT

obj.options['protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_mode'] =
OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE #ignore certificates for now
headerHandler =
ClientAuthHeaderHandler.new("myusername","mypassword")
obj.headerhandler.add( headerHandler )

puts obj.listConfigurations(nil)

On Apr 30, 5:24 pm, Bill <bill.gilb...@pacbell.net> wrote: