Hi all :wave: Can anyone give me a hint on how to ...

# ktor

[Marcus Ilgner]

Hi all 👋 Can anyone give me a hint on how to get a Ktor server to use the Authorization information from the connection_init message of a websocket connection for authentication? I have installed the Authentication plugin - works fine for regular JWT Bearer Tokens in the Authorization header of regular HTTP requests - and also set up a ContextFactory for subscriptions can handle the authorization part.

Unfortunately, the authentication part doesn't work yet, as it seems like the connection_init message isn't used by the Authentication plugin to set up the principal. The client used is graphql-ws and it looks like adding the auth information to connection_init is the only supported method. I read this comment about how using regular HTTP headers for websockets might not be a good idea and think that probably there is some way to get Ktor to use the connection_init payload. Any ideas / reading material?

[Marcus Ilgner]

Update: managed to implement this within the Expedia GraphQL Library using its SubscriptionsContextFactory and checking the params of its generateContext method. Then I parse the Authorization param, decode the JWT and set the account into the context.
So in the end, the Ktor authentication plugin wasn't even used after all.