= Testing HTTP Basic Authentication

While it has always been possible to authenticate with HTTP Basic, it was a bit tedious to remember the header name, format, and encode the values.
Now this can be done using Spring Security's `httpBasic` xref:servlet/test/mockmvc/request-post-processors.adoc[`RequestPostProcessor`].
For example, the snippet below:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,role="primary"]
----
mvc
	.perform(get("/").with(httpBasic("user","password")))
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,role="secondary"]
----
mvc.get("/") {
    with(httpBasic("user","password"))
}
----
======

will attempt to use HTTP Basic to authenticate a user with the username "user" and the password "password" by ensuring the following header is populated on the HTTP Request:

[source,text]
----
Authorization: Basic dXNlcjpwYXNzd29yZA==
----