[api] Customize the Authorization HTTP header

I need to authenticate a client when he sends a request to an API. The client has an API-token and I was thinking about using the standard Authorization header to send the token to the server.

Normally this header is used for Basic and Digest authentication. But I don't know if I'm allowed to customize the value of this header and use a custom auth-scheme, e.g:

Authorization: Token 1af538baa9045a84c0e889f672baf83ff24

Would you recommend this or not? Or is there an better approach to sending the token?

Kindly try below on postman :-

In header section example work for me..

Authorization : JWT eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.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.BkyB0LjKB4FIsCtnM5FcpcBLvKed_j7rCCxZddwiYnU

I would recommend not to use HTTP authentication with custom scheme names. If you feel that you have something of generic use, you can define a new scheme, though. See http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-latest.html#rfc.section.2.3 for details.

In the case of CROSS ORIGIN request read this:

I faced this situation and at first I chose to use the Authorization Header and later removed it after facing the following issue.

Authorization Header is considered a custom header. So if a cross-domain request is made with the Autorization Header set, the browser first sends a preflight request. A preflight request is an HTTP request by the OPTIONS method, this request strips all the parameters from the request. Your server needs to respond with Access-Control-Allow-Headers Header having the value of your custom header (Authorization header).

So for each request the client (browser) sends, an additional HTTP request(OPTIONS) was being sent by the browser. This deteriorated the performance of my API. You should check if adding this degrades your performance. As a workaround I am sending tokens in http parameters, which I know is not the best way of doing it but I couldn't compromise with the performance.

This is a bit dated but there may be others looking for answers to the same question. You should think about what protection spaces make sense for your APIs. For example, you may want to identify and authenticate client application access to your APIs to restrict their use to known, registered client applications. In this case, you can use the Basic authentication scheme with the client identifier as the user-id and client shared secret as the password. You don't need proprietary authentication schemes just clearly identify the one(s) to be used by clients for each protection space. I prefer only one for each protection space but the HTTP standards allow both multiple authentication schemes on each WWW-Authenticate header response and multiple WWW-Authenticate headers in each response; this will be confusing for API clients which options to use. Be consistent and clear then your APIs will be used.