Express NTLM Error when parsing Authorization header

Question

I posted a question here but after some investigation I have realised it wasn't my axios request that was causing the issue. I'm not sure how to close a question sorry.

I am receiving the following error when trying to send an Axios Get request to my express backend server. Front end is hosted on localhost:8080 and backend is localhost:5000.

[express-ntlm] Error when parsing Authorization header for URI http://localhost:5000/api/user/generateToken

Here is my Client Side Axios Request

axios.defaults.baseURL = 'http://localhost:5000/';

const generateToken = () => {
    axios
      .get('/api/user/generateToken', {
        withCredentials: true,
      })
      .then(payload => {
        // Set Auth Header with returned JWT Token
      })
      .catch(err => {
        console.log(err.response);
      });

This is the first request that is sent after the site is first launched and it should return a JWT Token which I will use to log the user in.

I then have express-ntlm setup to get the users logged in username to check if their in our database and if so return a valid token.

server code that sets up express-ntlm is

const express = require('express');
const http = require('http');
const path = require('path');
const cors = require('cors');
const ntlm = require('express-ntlm');
const passport = require('passport');

const server = express();

server.use(
  ntlm({
    debug: function() {
      var args = Array.prototype.slice.apply(arguments);
      console.log.apply(null, args);
    },
    domain: 'domain',
    domaincontroller: 'ldap://domainAddress',
  })
);

If I then navigate in a browser directly to http://localhost:5000/api/user/generateToken I get my expected result. however if I use axios.get and proxy to the url I get the above error in my server console and a 400 Bad Request in the client Console.

Here is the Router.get code

// @route   GET api/user/generateToken
// @desc    Create JWT Token
// @access  Public
router.get('/generateToken', (req, res) => {
  const errors = {};

  const username = req.ntlm.UserName;

  return User.findOne({ username }).then(user => {
    // Create JWT and return it to the user
  });
});

I'm not sure where to go from here its either some aditional settings needed for axios to set the header or something i need to change for express-ntlm. its strange as I can go to the page directly and it works but use axios and it fails

Answer 1

Try to print headers to console and check what's wrong with the Authorization header. Probably Axios modifies it.

Compare the headers you get from the manual athorization vs. through axios.