Authenticate

To use Skyflow's Management API, Data API, or SDKs, you need a bearer token to authenticate your API calls. Bearer tokens allow time-limited, scoped, and permission-sensitive access to your Skyflow account and the vaults it contains.

Skyflow's bearer tokens match the RFC's Authorization Bearer Token Header specification.

Sign in to your Skyflow account:

For trial environments, use try.skyflow.com.
For sandbox and production environments, use your dedicated sign-in URL.

If you don't have an account, sign up for a free trial account.

Create a vault

You can generate a bearer token with an SDK or (if you're in a trial environment) through Skyflow Studio.

When you integrate your backend systems with one of Skyflow's SDKs, you can use service account credentials to generate bearer tokens. Bearer tokens generated from SDKs are valid for 60 minutes and let you make API calls allowed by the policies associated with the service account.

A service account is an identity for machine access to your vault. A service account's roles, and the policies attached to those roles, decide the level of access a service account has to a vault.

If you already have a service account, skip to step 2.

You must have Vault Owner permissions to create a service account.

In Studio, click Settings in the upper navigation.In the side navigation, click Vault, then choose the vault you want to create a service account for from the dropdown menu.Under IAM, click Service Accounts, then click New Service Account.For Name, enter a value. For example, "Authentication".For Roles, select Vault Editor.Click Create.Your browser downloads a credentials.json file. Store this file in a secure location. You'll need it to generate bearer tokens.

Now that you have your credentials.json file, it's time to prepare the SDK in the language of your choice.

bash
go mod init

go
import (
  saUtil "github.com/skyflowapi/skyflow-go/service-account/util"
  Skyflow "github.com/skyflowapi/skyflow-go/skyflow/client"
  "github.com/skyflowapi/skyflow-go/skyflow/common"
  "github.com/skyflowapi/skyflow-go/commonutils/logger"
)

With the SDK installed, you can generate bearer tokens by passing your credentials.json file into an appropriate language-specific function.

go
package main
    
import (
    "fmt"
    saUtil "github.com/skyflowapi/skyflow-go/service-account/util"
)
    
var bearerToken = ""

func GetSkyflowBearerToken() (string, error) {

    filePath := "<PATH_TO_CREDENTIALS.JSON>"
    if saUtil.IsExpired(bearerToken) {
        newToken, err := saUtil.GenerateBearerToken(filePath)
        if err != nil {
            return "", err
        } else {
            bearerToken = newToken.AccessToken
            return bearerToken, nil
        }
    }
    return bearerToken, nil
}

Once you have your bearer token, you can programmatically interact with Skyflow APIs. See next steps.

If you're in a trial environment, you can generate bearer tokens through Studio. Bearer tokens generated in Studio are valid for 24 hours and let you make API calls allowed by the policies associated with your account.

In Studio, click your account icon and choose Generate API Bearer Token.Click Generate Token.

Studio copies the token onto your clipboard.

You can now use your bearer token to interact with Skyflow APIs.

If you're new to Skyflow, see the Get started guide. Otherwise, see the various ways you can use Skyflow APIs:

Data APIManagement APISDKsPostman