Why Does Invoke-WebRequest not authenticate with CouchDB while username and password are supplied?

I'm hosting a local instance of couchdb via docker at localhost:5984/. With a python requests client, I can make admin changes via API like so:

>>> requests.put('http://admin:password@localhost:5984/testdb').json()
{'ok': True}

However, when attempting with Windows HTTP client, couchdb says I'm not an admin user. I'm interpreting this as a failed authentication.

> Invoke-WebRequest -Method PUT http://admin:password@localhost:5984/testdb
Invoke-WebRequest : {"error":"unauthorized","reason":"You are not a server admin."}
At line:1 char:1
+ Invoke-WebRequest -Method PUT http://admin:password@localhost:5984/te ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (System.Net.HttpWebRequest:HttpWebRequest) [Invoke-WebRequest], WebException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletWebResponseException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand

Does Invoke-WebRequest have some kind of behavior preventing ability to embed credentials within the URL scheme?

Solution

Inserting the username and password in the URL as you are doing is not supported by Invoke-WebRequest. Instead, you have two options:

Use Get-Credential to build a username/password credential and then pass it to Invoke-WebRequest using the -Credential parameter. For instance:

$cred = Get-Credential "admin" # this will prompt you for the password
Invoke-WebRequest -Credential $cred -Method PUT http://localhost:5984/testdb

Base64-encode the 'username:password' string and pass that as a basic authentication header with the -Headers parameter. For instance:

$auth = [Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes("admin:password"))
Invoke-WebRequest -Headers @{Authorization = "Basic " + $auth} -Method PUT http://localhost:5984/testdb