You can generate an OAuth access token for testing purposes. To test or build an internal application, avoid API requests that are associated with a specific user, as is the case with basic authentication, which requires a username and password, or API token authentication, which also requires a username. Instead, use an OAuth access token.

Important: The technique described in this article consists of exchanging a Zendesk username and password for an access token. As a result, the token has the same security vulnerabilities as a password. Anybody with the token has access to the account. Keep the token in a safe place and don't hard-code it in your application code. Store it in an environment variable instead.

Creating the OAuth client

Your first step is to create an OAuth client for testing.

  1. In Admin Center, click the Apps and integrations icon (), then select Connections > OAuth clients.
  2. Click Add client.

Note the following differences from creating a normal OAuth client:

  • Your URLs needs to be valid HTTPS URLs, but they don't have to be a real website for this project. Example: https://somesite.com.
  • Unique identifier is the name of your client for use in code. Get the client ID with the List Clients endpoint of the OAuth Client API.
  • Copy your Client Secret for future reference. It won't be displayed again after you create it, and you'll need it build an OAuth web app or for other projects.
  • All other fields can be filled out with dummy data.

Add client.png

Creating the access token

Create a token with the OAuth Tokens API by making the request with cURL:

 curl https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/oauth/tokens.json \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   -d '{"token": {"client_id": "your_client_id", "scopes": ["read", "write"]}}' \
   -X POST -v -u {email_address}:{password}

A few things to note about this code:

  • Replace the subdomain placeholder with your own subdomain
  • The value of "client_id" is the number you copied from the OAuth Clients page
  • Set your scopes to ["read", "write"] unless you're specifically testing read-only access to a resource
  • If your organization uses single sign-on (SSO) and the Zendesk passwords were deleted from the Zendesk account, use an API token to authenticate the request: -u {email_address}/token:{api_token}. See the API token in the Support API docs.

Run your cURL request. It should return a JSON package consisting of a token object with several properties:

The value of full_token is your access token. Copy it and keep it.

Note that the response's expires_at property is null, which means the token won't stop working until you delete the client itself. Also, next time you visit the OAuth Clients list in Admin Center, your number of active tokens for your new client should increase by 1.

Using your new access token

Using an access token to authenticate an API request

Any API call that requires authentication can be made with an OAuth access token. For example, a call to the Ticket endpoint looks like this:

curl https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets.json \
   -u {email_address}:{password}

A call to the Ticket endpoint looks like this with an access token:

curl https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets.json \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer {access_token}"

Using an access token in an API client

Use an OAuth access token in any of our API clients. The Ruby client, for example, requires authentication with a username and password (or API token):

  config.username = "user email"
  config.password = "user password"

Here's how it looks if you use an access token instead:

 config.access_token = "your OAuth access token"

 

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