Getting a 401 Unauthorized access error

[Joe G]

I have been consistently getting a 401 Unauthorized access error when trying to connect.  Using the browser directly works, so the credentials appear to be ok.  Portion of feedback:

< HTTP/1.1 401 Access Denied
< Cache-Control: no-cache
< Content-ID: 123456
< Content-Type: text/html
< Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2015 05:33:17 GMT
< Expires: -1
< Pragma: no-cache
< RETS-Version: RETS/1.5
< Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
* Authentication problem. Ignoring this.
< WWW-Authenticate: Digest realm="MATRIX", nonce="MjAxNS0xMi0xMSAwNjozMzoxOC41ODc", opaque="0000000000000000", stale=false, algorithm=MD5, qop="auth"
< X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
< X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
< Content-Length: 1293
< Connection: keep-alive

Full debug info attached...

[Christopher Reichert]

Most of the time I've seen the error you posted, it's been due to a typo in the credentials or a permissions error with the RETS server (which required reaching out to them).

- Are you sure you get back a correct response when using the browser? e.g. a dictionary with different key-value pairs.

- Are you using the correct user agent and/or user agent password?

There are a few other things worth checking but this would be my first step.

Regards,

-Christopher

[Joe G]

Hi Christopher,

The permissions seem ok.  When I hit the Login url in a browser with the supplied credentials, this is the response I get:

<RETS ReplyCode="0" ReplyText="Operation Success."><RETS-RESPONSE>
MemberName=
User=xxxxxxxx,NULL,NULL,xxxxxxxx
Broker=
MetadataVersion=1.11.72953
MetadataTimestamp=2015-12-01T02:54:13Z
MinMetadataTimestamp=2015-12-01T02:54:13Z
Login=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/Login.ashx
Logout=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/Logout.ashx
Search=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/Search.ashx
GetMetadata=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/GetMetadata.ashx
GetObject=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/GetObject.ashx
Update=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/Update.ashx
PostObject=http://matrixrets.hicentralmls.com/rets/PostObject.ashx
</RETS-RESPONSE></RETS>

The login credentials were copied / pasted into the accessing script, so are the same as what was used in the direct browser request.  No specific user agent requirements were provided by the MLS, although I did try copying the exact user agent string my browser had been using and using that in the script, but that yielded the same results.

Any thoughts?

Best,
Joe

[Christopher Reichert]

Do the credentials work with http://retsmd.com/?

-Christopher

[Joe G]

Yes - output attached...

[Joe G]

I decided to try this on another machine, and discovered that access DOES work off our server.  So, same script, same credentials, off a different server is able to connect to the MLS without issue.  I thought perhaps it was something with my local apache config, but I tried spinning up a quick PHP server instance, and had the same problem.  Also tried shutting off my local firewall (just in case) -- also made no difference...

[Leo Tse]

Hi Joe,

If you're using Windows and your Windows was not activated when you installed your localhost software (XAMPP, WAMP, etc), then you will get a 401 error. If that's your situation, just simply get a CD key and activate your Windows, then re-install your localhost software. 

The same issue happened once for my colleague's computer, and that's how we solved it.