[[http-clients]]
=== HTTP/REST clients and security

The {es} {security-features} work with standard HTTP 
{wikipedia}/Basic_access_authentication[basic authentication]
headers to authenticate users. Since Elasticsearch is stateless, this header must
be sent with every request:

[source,shell]
--------------------------------------------------
Authorization: Basic <TOKEN> <1>
--------------------------------------------------
<1> The `<TOKEN>` is computed as `base64(USERNAME:PASSWORD)`

[float]
==== Client examples

This example uses `curl` without basic auth to create an index:

[source,shell]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
curl -XPUT 'localhost:9200/idx'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[source,js]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{
  "error":  "AuthenticationException[Missing authentication token]",
  "status": 401
}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since no user is associated with the request above, an authentication error is
returned. Now we'll use `curl` with basic auth to create an index as the
`rdeniro` user:

[source,shell]
---------------------------------------------------------
curl --user rdeniro:taxidriver -XPUT 'localhost:9200/idx'
---------------------------------------------------------

[source,js]
---------------------------------------------------------
{
  "acknowledged": true
}
---------------------------------------------------------

[float]
==== Client Libraries over HTTP

For more information about using {security-features} with the language 
specific clients, refer to
https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-ruby/tree/master/elasticsearch-transport#authentication[Ruby],
http://elasticsearch-py.readthedocs.org/en/master/#ssl-and-authentication[Python],
https://metacpan.org/pod/Search::Elasticsearch::Cxn::HTTPTiny#CONFIGURATION[Perl],
http://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/php-api/current/security.html[PHP],
http://nest.azurewebsites.net/elasticsearch-net/security.html[.NET],
http://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/javascript-api/current/auth-reference.html[JavaScript]

////
Groovy - TODO link
////