---
date: "2018-06-24:00:00+02:00"
title: "API Usage"
slug: "api-usage"
weight: 40
toc: false
draft: false
menu:
  sidebar:
    parent: "developers"
    name: "API Usage"
    weight: 40
    identifier: "api-usage"
---

# API Usage

**Table of Contents**

{{< toc >}}

## Enabling/configuring API access

By default, `ENABLE_SWAGGER` is true, and
`MAX_RESPONSE_ITEMS` is set to 50. See [Config Cheat
Sheet](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/config-cheat-sheet/) for more
information.

## Authentication

Gitea supports these methods of API authentication:

- HTTP basic authentication
- `token=...` parameter in URL query string
- `access_token=...` parameter in URL query string
- `Authorization: token ...` header in HTTP headers

All of these methods accept the same API key token type. You can
better understand this by looking at the code -- as of this writing,
Gitea parses queries and headers to find the token in
[modules/auth/auth.go](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/6efdcaed86565c91a3dc77631372a9cc45a58e89/modules/auth/auth.go#L47).

## Generating and listing API tokens

A new token can be generated with a `POST` request to
`/users/:name/tokens`.

Note that `/users/:name/tokens` is a special endpoint and requires you
to authenticate using `BasicAuth` and a password, as follows:

```sh
$ curl -XPOST -H "Content-Type: application/json"  -k -d '{"name":"test"}' -u username:password https://gitea.your.host/api/v1/users/<username>/tokens
{"id":1,"name":"test","sha1":"9fcb1158165773dd010fca5f0cf7174316c3e37d","token_last_eight":"16c3e37d"}
```

The ``sha1`` (the token) is only returned once and is not stored in
plain-text.  It will not be displayed when listing tokens with a `GET`
request; e.g.

```sh
$ curl --request GET --url https://yourusername:password@gitea.your.host/api/v1/users/<username>/tokens
[{"name":"test","sha1":"","token_last_eight:"........":},{"name":"dev","sha1":"","token_last_eight":"........"}]
```

To use the API with basic authentication with two factor authentication
enabled, you'll need to send an additional header that contains the one
time password (6 digitrotating token).
An example of the header is `X-Gitea-OTP: 123456` where `123456`
is where you'd place the code from your authenticator.
Here is how the request would look like in curl:

```sh
$ curl -H "X-Gitea-OTP: 123456" --request GET --url https://yourusername:yourpassword@gitea.your.host/api/v1/users/yourusername/tokens
```

You can also create an API key token via your Gitea installation's web
interface: `Settings | Applications | Generate New Token`.

## OAuth2 Provider

Access tokens obtained from Gitea's [OAuth2 provider](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/oauth2-provider) are accepted by these methods:

- `Authorization bearer ...` header in HTTP headers
- `token=...` parameter in URL query string
- `access_token=...` parameter in URL query string

### More on the `Authorization:` header

For historical reasons, Gitea needs the word `token` included before
the API key token in an authorization header, like this:

```sh
Authorization: token 65eaa9c8ef52460d22a93307fe0aee76289dc675
```

In a `curl` command, for instance, this would look like:

```sh
curl -X POST "http://localhost:4000/api/v1/repos/test1/test1/issues" \
    -H "accept: application/json" \
    -H "Authorization: token 65eaa9c8ef52460d22a93307fe0aee76289dc675" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{ \"body\": \"testing\", \"title\": \"test 20\"}" -i
```

As mentioned above, the token used is the same one you would use in
the `token=` string in a GET request.

## API Guide:

API Reference guide is auto-generated by swagger and available on:
`https://gitea.your.host/api/swagger`
or on the
[Gitea demo instance](https://try.gitea.io/api/swagger)

The OpenAPI document is at:
`https://gitea.your.host/swagger.v1.json`

## Sudo

The API allows admin users to sudo API requests as another user. Simply add either a `sudo=` parameter or `Sudo:` request header with the username of the user to sudo.

## SDKs

- [Official go-sdk](https://gitea.com/gitea/go-sdk)
- [more](https://gitea.com/gitea/awesome-gitea#user-content-sdk)