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Unauthorized errors (401) while invoking APIs

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Referring to the article on Azure API Management Troubleshooting Series, this is the third scenario of the lab. Make sure you have followed the lab setup instructions as per this, to recreate the problem.

Original product version:   API Management Service
Original KB number:   4464930

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Symptoms

The Echo API suddenly started throwing diverse types of HTTP 401 - Unauthorized errors while invoking the operations under it. Create resource and Retrieve resource operations are showing this error message:

{
"statusCode": 401,
"message": "Access denied due to invalid subscription key. Make sure to provide a valid key for an active subscription."
}

Whereas rest of the operations are showing

{
"statusCode": 401,
"message": "Access denied due to missing subscription key. Make sure to include subscription key when making requests to an API."
}

The expected HTTP response code for all the operations is 200, however the response body will vary as the backend API always echoes whatever you send as a request body in addition to headers.

Troubleshooting steps

  • To get access to the API, developers must first subscribe to a product. When they subscribe, they get a subscription key that is sent as a part of request header that is good for any API in that product. Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key is the request header sent for the subscription key of the product that is associated with this API. The key is filled in automatically.

  • Regarding error Access denied due to invalid subscription key. Make sure to provide a valid key for an active subscription, it's clear that you are sending a wrong value of Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key request header while invoking Create resource and Retrieve resource operations.

  • You can check your subscription key for a particular product from APIM Developer portal by navigating to Profile page after sign-in as shown below.

  • Select the Show button to see the subscription keys for respective products you have subscribed to.

    Screenshot of the subscription keys for respective products.

  • If you check the headers being sent from Test tab, you notice that the value of Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key request header is wrong. You might be wondering how come that is possible, because APIM automatically fills this request header with the right subscription key.

  • Let's check the Frontend definition of Create resource and Retrieve resource operations under Design tab. Upon careful inspection, you would notice that these operations got a wrong hard-coded value of Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key request header added under Headers tab.

  • You can remove it, this should resolve the invalid subscription key problem, but still you would get missing subscription key error.

    You may get the following error message:

    HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized

    Content-Length: 152
    Content-Type: application/json
    Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2018 14:29:50 GMT
    Vary: Origin WWW-Authenticate: AzureApiManagementKey realm="https://pratyay.azure-api.net/echo",name="Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key",type="header" {
    "statusCode": 401,
    "message": "Access denied due to missing subscription key. Make sure to include subscription key when making requests to an API." }

  • Go to the Echo APIsettings and check if it is associated with any of the available products. If not, then you must associate this API with a product so that you get a subscription key.

    Developers must first subscribe to a product to get access to the API. When they subscribe, they get a subscription key that is good for any API in that product. If you created the APIM instance, you are an administrator already, so you are subscribed to every product by default.

Contact us for help

If you have questions or need help, create a support request, or ask Azure community support. You can also submit product feedback to Azure feedback community.