Enrich Your Web Apps: Set Custom Request Headers with XMLHttpRequest

Elevate your development skills by learning how to add custom headers to your XMLHttpRequests

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

When interacting with RESTful APIs or custom backends, adding custom request headers becomes crucial. These metadata fields often contain essential information like authentication tokens, content types, or client details. Today, we explore how to leverage XMLHttpRequest (XHR) to configure custom headers seamlessly.

Setting Basic Authorization Header

Let’s start by implementing a basic authorization header, commonly found across various platforms.

Step 1: Obtain Credentials

Extract username and password credentials from secure storage or local variables. Replace username and password placeholders accordingly.

const username = '<YOUR_USERNAME>';
const password = '<YOUR_PASSWORD>';

Step 2: Create Base64 Encoded String

Encode the combined string representation (username + colon + password) into base64 format. Modern browsers simplify this process using TextEncoder API.

const authString = `${username}:${password}`…