The Basic Authentication standard has been in place since the 1990s and can be the simplest way to provide a user login. When used over HTTP, it is in no way secure since a plain text password is sent over the connection from browser to server.
Note
For information on Basic Authentication see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_authentication.
However, when coupled with SSL (HTTPS), Basic Authentication can be a useful method if we're not concerned about a custom-styled login form.
Note
We discuss SSL/TLS (HTTPS) in the Setting up an HTTPS web server recipe of this chapter. For extra information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSL/TLS.
In this recipe, we'll learn how to initiate and process a Basic Access Authentication request over plain HTTP. In following recipes, we'll implement an HTTPS server, and see an advancement of Basic Authentication (Digest Authentication).