Every request made to https://api.uploadcare.com/ MUST be signed. HTTPS SHOULD be used with any authorization scheme.

Requests MUST contain the Authorization header defining auth-scheme and auth-param: Authorization: auth-scheme auth-param.

Every request SHOULD contain the Accept header identifying the REST API version: Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.5+json. If the Accept header is not present, a default API version is used: v0.5.

There are two available authorization schemes:

• Uploadcare.Simple, a simple scheme where your Secret API Key MUST be specified in every request's auth-param.
• Uploadcare, a more sophisticated scheme where a signature, not your Secret API Key MUST be specified. Signatures are then generated on your backend.

With the Uploadcare.Simple authentication method, auth-param is your public_key:secret_key pair. With this scheme, your Uploadcare project secret_key gets included in every request.

Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.5+json
Authorization: Uploadcare.Simple public_key:secret_key

With the Uploadcare authentication method:

• auth-param is a public_key:signature pair, where your secret_key is used to derive signature but is not included in every request itself.
• You MUST also provide the Date header formatted like in the example below (timezone must be always GMT) and the date you provide MUST NOT exceed the 15-minute offset from the server time of the API endpoint. Date and time strings used with the API MUST be in the ISO 8601 extended format.

Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.5+json
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:10:54 GMT
Authorization: Uploadcare ac58a21ea143ffa4f1af:6ff75027649aadd4dc98c1f784444445d1e6ed82

The signature part of the Uploadcare authentication method auth-param MUST be constructed from the following components:

• Request type (POST, GET, HEAD, OPTIONS)
• Hex md5 hash of the request body
• Content-Type header value
• Date header value
• URI including path and parameters

The parameters are then concatenated in textual order using LF: every value sits in a separate line. The result is then signed with HMAC/SHA1 using your project's secret_key.

Take a look at the Python example of deriving signature; the example request is made to get a list of files:

import time
import hashlib
import hmac
from email import utils

# Specifying the project’s key (demo account Public API Key is used in this example)
SECRET_KEY = 'demosecretkey'

# Specifying request type
verb = 'GET'

# Calculating md5, since we send an empty string,
# md5 calculations are performed for an empty string
content_md5 = hashlib.md5(b'').hexdigest()

# Content-Type header
content_type = 'application/json'

# Current time, e.g. 1541423681
timestamp = int(time.time())
# Date header ('Mon, 05 Nov 2018 13:14:41 GMT')
date_header = utils.formatdate(timestamp, usegmt=True)

# The request URI
uri = '/files/?limit=1&stored=true'

# Forming the final string: concatenating
sign_string = '\n'.join([verb, content_md5, content_type, date_header, uri])

# Calculating the signature,
# the result may look like this: "3cbc4d2cf91f80c1ba162b926f8a975e8bec7995"
signature = hmac.new(SECRET_KEY.encode(), sign_string.encode(), hashlib.sha1).hexdigest()

Once signature is derived, it SHOULD be implemented into the request body:

curl  \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -H 'Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.5+json' \
    -H 'Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2018 13:14:41 GMT' \
    -H 'Authorization: Uploadcare demopublickey:3cbc4d2cf91f80c1ba162b926f8a975e8bec7995' \
    'https://api.uploadcare.com/files/?limit=1&stored=true'