[SOLVED] How to use GitHub API in Postman

Issue

I would like to get a list of public gists in Postman. I can do curl https://api.github.com/gists/public in my command line which works fine.

However I did not manage to find out how to do the same in Postman.

I tried to make a GET request at https://api.github.com/gists/public which returned the following object:

{
  "message": "Bad credentials",
  "documentation_url": "https://developer.github.com/v3"
}

I find it confusing to not to be required to authenticate when making the request from command line but when I would like to do basically the same from Postman it throws an error. But ok, I tried to authenticate myself.

I have created an OAuth application in my GitHub so I recieved a Client ID and Client Secret.

I have tried to pass these to my requests as query params / header information / and also as part of the body without any success.

I also have tried to use the web application flow (https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#web-application-flow), and tried to create a new authorization with sending a POST request to https://api.github.com/authorizations with my User ID and User Secret in it (https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth_authorizations/#create-a-new-authorization), which returned

{
  "message": "Requires authentication",
  "documentation_url": "https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth_authorizations/#oauth-authorizations-api"
}

Now I am super confused about what should generate my token, and where should I pass it to. All I want is some public information (public gists) in Postman, the same as in command line.

Solution

Using the header method, you should be able to put "Authorization: token OAUTH-TOKEN" directly into the key input under the Headers section.

Obviously replace OAUTH-TOKEN with your actual token.

Edit: To illustrate the steps more clearly see the image below (a) in the key field, put in 'Authorization', (b) in the value field, put in 'token ' (do not include the <> brackets!)

Looking at it in curl, it adds -H "Authorization: token <your token here>" to the request, which is what is needed.

Answered By - Scott P

Answer Checked By - David Marino (WPSolving Volunteer)