must I need to use C# and CSOM to conect to the Sharepoint rest web api?

Question

I recently had a question and how to connect to the REST web api using c# and it gave a hard time trying to connect, documentation does not give any clue how to use the rest web api(code) but community forums does, but in the code there is a CSOM nugget that seems to handle the negotiation when requests are made code below.

        var s = new System.Security.SecureString();
        "123abc".ToList().ForEach(o => s.AppendChar(o));
        SharePointOnlineCredentials cred = new SharePointOnlineCredentials("admin@test.onmicrosoft.com", s);
        HttpWebRequest endpointRequesta = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("https://test.sharepoint.com/sites/CRM/_api/contextinfo");
        endpointRequest.Method = "GET";
        endpointRequest.Accept = "application/json;odata=verbose";
        endpointRequest.Credentials = cred; //<-- Notice this
        endpointRequest.Headers.Add("X-FORMS_BASED_AUTH_ACCEPTED", "f");
        HttpWebResponse endpointResponse1 = (HttpWebResponse)endpointRequest.GetResponse();

my questions are

• Here it's using SharePointOnlineCredentials Object from CSOM ¿Why can't I use System.Net.NetworkCredential("admin@test.onmicrosoft.com", "123abc")(basic Auth)? well I can use it but it raise an error 401 but with SharePointOnlineCredentials runs well. but ¿why?

• So it make me think then that I'm forced to use .net or C# for calling this sharepoint REST Apis ¿What if i just need to call this rest api as normal webservice with any languaje?

regards.

Answer 1

SharePoint Online uses claims based authentication, basic Auth would not work for SharePoint Online.

You could refer to here for more: Make a RESTful API Call to SharePoint Online from Console program

Answer 2

It depends on what tools you will use to connect to SharePoint,

Either of below you can use to connect,

1. PowerShell : There is a list of command lines ready to use, we have sp powershell and pnp
2. SharePoint rest api , 1 option if you intend to connect via client side browser

Hope it helps! Happy SharePointing!

Answer 3

PNP will (should) make your live a lot easier ? I use PNP js, but there is a nuget package for C#. If that works as the .js modules work it's quite easy to connect to SharePoint https://github.com/pnp/pnpcore