apichallenges > solutions > post-secret-note-200

How to complete the POST secret note challenge

When we are authenticated and authorized we can amend secured user information. In the API Challenges we do this by POST request to the user's secrete note endpoint which returns a status code of 200 and amends the secret note.

POST Amend Secret Note Challenge

Most of the challenges simply require the correct payload, and an X-Challenger header to track the session. The authentication challenges require an extra header, the value for which can only be obtained with a username and password. This value is obtained when completing challenge post secret 201.

The X-CHALLENGER header authenticates you to access a specific set of secret notes, and the X-AUTH-TOKEN authorizes you to gain access.

• Authentication is "are you who you say you are" (X-CHALLENGER)
• Authorization is "do you have the right permissions" (X-AUTH-TOKEN)

Challenge 34 POST Amend

Issue a POST request on the /secret/note end point with a note payload e.g. {"note":"my note"} and receive 200 when valid X-AUTH-TOKEN used. Note is maximum length 100 chars and will be truncated when stored.

• POST request means use the HTTP Verb POST
  • e.g. POST /secret/note sends to the secret note endpoint
• with a note payload include a JSON formatted object as the payload
• valid X-AUTH-TOKEN used means a custom header named X-AUTH-TOKEN should be added to the message with the value received from the /secret/token response in Challenge 30
• add the X-CHALLENGER header to track progress and authenticate the request
• Receive a 200 response because both X-CHALLENGER and X-AUTH-TOKEN are for the same user and the payload was well formatted.

Basic Instructions

• Create a new request for the /secret/note end point
  • if running locally that endpoint would be
    • https://apichallenges.herokuapp.com/secret/note
• The verb should be a POST
• Ensure there is a custom header with the name X-AUTH-TOKEN and the value is the same as received in the /secret/token response
• The request should have an X-CHALLENGER header to track challenge completion
• Add a JSON Payload of the format {"note":"my note"}
• Include header for Content-type value application/json
• If the text is too long it will be truncated
• You should receive a 200 response
• The body of the response will contain the secret note

Example Request

> POST /secret/note HTTP/1.1
> Host: apichallenges.herokuapp.com
> User-Agent: insomnia/2021.2.2
> X-CHALLENGER: x-challenger-guid
> X-AUTH-TOKEN: x-auth-token-value
> Content-Type: application/json
> Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46cGFzc3dvcmQ=
> Accept: */*
> Content-Length: 31

| {
|   "note": "my note is here"
| }

Example Response

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Connection: close
< Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 11:47:36 GMT
< X-Challenger: x-challenger-guid
< Content-Type: application/json
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *
< Server: Jetty(9.4.z-SNAPSHOT)
< Via: 1.1 vegur

Example body of the response:

{
    "note": "my note is here"
}

Extras

• Try varying the length of the note... does the system truncate as expected?

Overview Video

Patreon ad free version