Basic authorization in NSMutableURLRequest isn't working - objective-c

Question

I'm trying to add basic authorization to my request header. The code below compiles and I dont get any runtime errors. However, on the server side I do not see the "Authorization" in the header at all.
I was able to implement the didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge method and that works, but I dont understand why I have to do it this way. I simply want to always add basic auth to every request.
I'm not interested in using ASIHTTPRequest.
Thanks for the help!
This is my code below:
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:#"http://localhost:8000/MyWebService"];
self.userName = #"myusername";
self.password = #"mypassword";
NSMutableString *credentials = [[NSMutableString alloc] initWithFormat:#"%#:%#", userName, password];
NSString *encodedCredentials = [[credentials dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] base64EncodedString];
NSString *authHeader = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Basic %#", encodedCredentials];
NSMutableURLRequest* req = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url cachePolicy:NSURLRequestReloadIgnoringCacheData timeoutInterval:5];
[req addValue:authHeader forHTTPHeaderField:#"Authorization"];
self.urlConnection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:req delegate:self startImmediately:YES];
if (self.urlConnection) {
self.receivedData = [NSMutableData data];
}
else {
errorLabel.text = #"Error connecting to the server";
}

Answer 1

The didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge is the way it works in iOS and the easiest way to do it. It will be submitted with every request (with the challenge). Guess that's not what you want to hear=)
I guess you have tried using different tutorials. I've used this one to authenticate before:
Basic access Auth, iOS