---
title: Character encoding in authentication headers
description: You can use encoded characters in all three IDM authentication headers (X-OpenIDM-Username, X-OpenIDM-Password, and X-OpenIDM-Reauth-Password). This lets you use non-ASCII characters in these header values. The RFC 5987-encoding is automatically detected and decoded when present. The following character sets are supported:
component: pingidm
version: 8.1
page_id: pingidm:auth-guide:authentication-headers-encoding
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingidm/8.1/auth-guide/authentication-headers-encoding.html
keywords: ["Authentication", "Character Encoding"]
---

# Character encoding in authentication headers

You can use [encoded characters](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5987.html) in all three IDM authentication headers (`X-OpenIDM-Username`, `X-OpenIDM-Password`, and `X-OpenIDM-Reauth-Password`). This lets you use non-ASCII characters in these header values. The RFC 5987-encoding is automatically detected and decoded when present. The following character sets are supported:

* UTF-8

* ISO 8859-1

The following command shows a request for a user (openidm-admin) whose password is `Passw£rd123`. The Unicode `£` sign (U+00A3) is encoded into the octet sequence C2 A3 using UTF-8 character encoding, then percent-encoded:

```
curl \
--header "X-OpenIDM-Username: openidm-admin" \
--header "X-OpenIDM-Password: UTF-8''Passw%C2%A3rd123" \
--header "Accept-API-Version: resource=1.0" \
--cacert ca-cert.pem \
--request GET \
"https://localhost:8443/openidm/managed/user?_queryFilter=true&_fields=_id"
```