Nginx - Decode URL query parameter and forward it as request header - nginx

Question

I need to send some basic auth credentials (es. user:pass) to nginx in the form of query parameter (es. http://example.com?BASIC_AUTH=dXNlcjpwYXNz) and being able to forward them in the more usual Authorization: Basic dXNlcjpwYXNz header form to a target server behind the proxy.
I'm already able to retrieve the value of the encoded auth string with a regular expression. The problem is that very often that value may contain some character that need to be percent-encoded in the URL. Es. user:pass! -> ?BASIC_AUTH=dXNlcjpwYXNzIQ== becomes ?BASIC_AUTH=dXNlcjpwYXNzIQ%3D%3D
Therefore, when I forward the request to the target server, I end up specifing Authorization: Basic dXNlcjpwYXNzIQ%3D%3D which the target server will reject, giving a 401 Unauthorized.
How can I force nginx to decode the auth string before setting the Authorization header? Thanks in advance for your help.
Note: I can't send the auth string in the Authorization header in the first place due to some application-specific constraints.

Answer 1

"Pure" nginx solution
Unfortunately nginx does not provide a rich string operations set. I think there isn't a way to do global search-and-replace through some string (which can be a solution if we could replace all %2B with +, %2F with / and %3D with =). However there are circumstances under which nginx performs an urldecoding of some string - when this string becomes a part of an URI which will be forwarded to an upstream proxy server.
So we can add a value of a BASIC_AUTH request argument to the URI and make a proxy request to ourself:
# Main server block
server {
listen 80 default_server;
...
location / {
if ($arg_basic_auth) {
# "basic_auth" request argument is present,
# append "/decode_basic_auth/<BASE64_token>" to the URI
# and go to the next location block
rewrite ^(.*)$ /decode_basic_auth/$arg_basic_auth$1 last;
}
# No "basic_auth" request argument present,
# can do a proxy call from here without setting authorization headers
...
}
location /decode_basic_auth/ {
# This will be an internal location only
internal;
# Remove "basic_auth" request argument from the list of arguments
if ($args ~* (.*)(^|&)basic_auth=[^&]*(\2|$)&?(.*)) {
set $args $1$3$4;
}
# Some hostname for processing proxy subrequests
proxy_set_header Host internal.basic.auth.localhost;
# Do a subrequest to ourselfs, preserving other request arguments
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1$uri$is_args$args;
}
}
# Additional server block for proxy subrequests processing
server {
listen 80;
server_name internal.basic.auth.localhost;
# Got URI in form "/decode_basic_auth/<BASE64_token>/<Original_URI>"
location ~ ^/decode_basic_auth/([^/]+)(/.*)$ {
proxy_set_header Authorization "Basic $1";
# Setup other HTTP headers here
...
proxy_pass http://<upstream_server>$2$is_args$args;
}
# Do not serve other requests
location / {
return 444;
}
}
Maybe this is not a very elegant solution, but it is tested and works.
OpenResty / ngx_http_lua_module
This can be easily solved with openresty or ngx_http_lua_module using ngx.escape_uri function:
server {
listen 80 default_server;
...
location / {
set $auth $arg_basic_auth;
if ($args ~* (.*)(^|&)basic_auth=[^&]*(\2|$)&?(.*)) {
set $args $1$3$4;
}
rewrite_by_lua_block {
ngx.var.auth = ngx.unescape_uri(ngx.var.auth)
}
proxy_set_header Authorization "Basic $auth";
# Setup other HTTP headers here
...
proxy_pass http://<upstream_server>;
}
}