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# Authenticate

## Description

Logs the user on to the server and returns the LW-SSO, Light Weight Single Sign On cookie (and QCSession cookie in versions earlier than 2020) for use with all subsequent requests.

## URL

    /Admin/rest/authentication-point/authenticate

## Remarks

To create the request header, encode the string "<user name>:<password>" using Base64. The request header text is "Authorization: Basic <encoded user:password>"

In the header of each request after authentication, your application passes the cookies returned by the authenticate resource.

Versions earlier than 2020: The tokens time out according to the System Administration settings from Application Lifecycle Management, by default after one hour of inactivity. The LW-SSO token is self-contained.

When your application has completed its work, call logout to release the log-on and session.

## HTTP Method

GET: Returns the LW-SSO cookie (and QCSession cookie in versions earlier than 2020).

## Request

Headers:

Authorization: Basic <encoded user:password>

Cookies:

None

Request Body:

None

Request Example

    GET /Admin/rest/authentication-point/authenticate
    Authorization: Basic c2E6

## Response

Headers:

None

Cookies:

Version 2020 (or later) | Set-Cookie: LWSSO_COOKIE_KEY = {cookie}
Versions earlier than 2020 | Set-Cookie: LWSSO_COOKIE_KEY = {cookie} Set-Cookie: QCSession = {cookie}

HTML Return Code:

One of the HTTP Return Codes

HTML Body:

None

## See Also

logout