PHP Authorization: Bearer header keeps changing names

Question

I implemented JWT tokens in PHP/Phalcon, for which you need to send the JWT token in the Authorization header. I send the header as follows:

$.ajax({
      url: URL,
      dataType: 'text',
      method: 'post',
      data: { "data": "values" },
      success: function(data) {
        return console.log("Returned data: ", data);
      },
      beforeSend: function(xhr, settings) {
        xhr.setRequestHeader('Authorization', 'Bearer ' + token); 
});

To read the header, I do the following:

$auth_header = $request->getHeader ( 'Authorization' );

And that's it. I was able to successfully read the header and life went on.

I few days later, my code was unable to read the header. The value of $auth_header was empty. After some diagnosis, I found that the header needed to be read as follows:

$auth_header = $request->getHeader ( 'REDIRECT_HTTP_AUTHORIZATION' );

I added both parameters to my code so that both headers could be read, depending on which actually came. A few days later I added a third one:

$auth_header = $request->getHeader ( 'AUTHORIZATION' );

This time the word had to be all capital, or it wouldn't read anything.

So what now? Will there be a fourth name in a few days? How should I proceed? I'd like to point out that none of this is happening on PHP 5.6. It is only happening on the dev server which is PHP 5.3. Is this a known issue? What is the root cause?

My .htaccess file is:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^((?s).*)$ index.php?_url=/$1 [QSA,L]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} ^(.*)
    RewriteRule .* - [e=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%1]
</IfModule>

Answer 1

I'm checking if header is set with Phalcon's hasServer function

if($request->hasServer('HTTP_AUTHORIZATION')){
   $jwt = $request->getServer('HTTP_AUTHORIZATION')
.....
}