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Getting your Access Token

This tutorial will help you to request for an access token. Prior to making any calls with our APIs, you would need to have a valid access token.

Pre-Requisites​

  • This tutorial assumes you already have a Handshakes account.
  • A desktop API client (e.g. Postman or Insomnia) has been installed on your local environment.

Request an Access Token​

The access token is a string which contains the credentials and permissions that can be used to access user data (e.g. credit balance, available data sources) or perform an action (e.g search for an entity, retrieve data of a corporate, or generate a graph).

In order to request for the access token, you require the username and password of your Handshakes account.

Using Postman for token retrieval

Successful Authentication​

If the authentication is successful, you should receive the following JSON response which contains the access token.

{
  "access_token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8yMDAwLzA5L3htbGRzaWcjaG1hYy1zaGExIn0.eyJ1bmlxdWVfbmFtZSI6Impvc2h1YSIsIm5hbWVpZCI6ImJmNWRmNDY2LWFiZDctNDE0YS05Yjc2LTdmMmI2ODAxM2QxOSIsImZlYXR1cmVzIjoiMSwyLDMsNCw1LDYsNyw4LDksMTIsMTMsMTQsMTUsMTYsMTgsMTksMjAsMjEsMjIsMjQsMjYsMjcsMjgsMjksMzAsMzEsMzIsMzMsMzUsMzYsMzcsMzgsMzksNDAsNDEsNDIsNDMsNDUsNDYsNDcsNDgiLCJleHBhbmRfbGltaXQiOiI2Iiwicm9sZUlkIjoiMiIsImlzcyI6IkdpbmdlclYyIiwiYXVkIjoic2VsZiIsImV4cCI6MTcwMDc2MDAwMCwibmJmIjoxNzAwNTAwODAwfQ.Unrvdz39kdma3W76yuAdl4yTQ1I",
  "token_type": "bearer",
  "expires_in": 259199
}

access_token - JSON web token to be inserted as Bearer token in Authorization header for subsequent requests to Handshakes API.

token_type - Type of token generated. The only supported token type now is "bearer".

expires_in - Durations in seconds before token expires. An access token is valid for 1 hour (3,600 seconds). Upon expiration, you will need to request a new one.