How to generate an access token using Python

This quick how-to was written with python 2.7.11 and requests 2.8.1

PyVSS is now the supported and recommended method to interact with the RESTful API.

Step-by-step guide

The following steps demonstrate how get_token.py works:

Import requests, sys, getpass and requests.auth.HTTPBasicAuth to handle endpoint authentication.
```
import getpass
import sys
import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth
```

Get user from input and password via getpass.getpass() so it's not prompted.

# input argument
usr = sys.argv[1]
# Prompt the user for a password without echoing.
pwd = getpass.getpass()

Set the authentication endpoint

token_endpoint = 'https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token'

Make a POST request to token_request and create a new HTTPBasicAuth object initializing it with usr and pwd
```
r = requests.post(url=token_endpoint, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(usr, pwd))
```
Get JSON response body
```
data = r.json()
```

Print Error if any or the token if succeeded:

if r.ok:
    print 'TOKEN={}'.format(data['token'])
else:
    print 'ERROR: {} {}: {}'.format(r.status_code, data['error'], data['message'])

Script

Full python script is showing below:

#!/usr/bin/env python

# importing modules
import getpass
import sys
import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth

# input argument
usr = sys.argv[1]

# Prompt the user for a password without echoing.
pwd = getpass.getpass()

# authentication endpoint
token_endpoint = 'https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token'

# making post request
r = requests.post(url=token_endpoint, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(usr, pwd))
data = r.json()

# getting token or printing error
if r.ok:
    print 'TOKEN={}'.format(data['token'])
else:
    print 'ERROR: {} {}: {}'.format(r.status_code, data['error'], data['message'])

Download get_token.py

How to generate an access token using Python

Step-by-step guide

Script

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