Authenticate with Basic

APPLIES TO: All API Management tiers

Use the authentication-basic policy to authenticate with a backend service using Basic authentication. This policy effectively sets the HTTP Authorization header to the value corresponding to the credentials provided in the policy.

Note

Set the policy's elements and child elements in the order provided in the policy statement. Learn more about how to set or edit API Management policies.

Policy statement

<authentication-basic username="username" password="password" />

Attributes

Attribute	Description	Required	Default
username	Specifies the username of the Basic credential. Policy expressions are allowed.	Yes	N/A
password	Specifies the password of the Basic credential. Policy expressions are allowed.	Yes	N/A

Usage

• Policy sections: inbound
• Policy scopes: global, workspace, product, API, operation
• Gateways: classic, v2, consumption, self-hosted

Usage notes

• This policy can only be used once in a policy section.
• We recommend using named values to provide credentials, with secrets protected in a key vault.

Example

<authentication-basic username="testuser" password="testpassword" />

Related policies

• Authentication and authorization

Related content

For more information about working with policies, see:

• Tutorial: Transform and protect your API
• Policy reference for a full list of policy statements and their settings
• Policy expressions
• Set or edit policies
• Reuse policy configurations
• Policy snippets repo
• Author policies using Microsoft Copilot for Azure