REST API

Authentication

apiKeyAuth

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 MUST contain the Accept header identifying the REST API version: Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.7+json.

There are two available authorization schemes:

  • For production: Uploadcare, a scheme where a signature, not your Secret API Key MUST be specified. Signatures SHOULD be generated on backend.
  • For quick tests: Uploadcare.Simple, a simple scheme where your Secret API Key MUST be specified in every request’s auth-param.

Uploadcare

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 in RFC2822 format with the time zone set to GMT (see the example below).
  • The date you provide MUST NOT exceed the 15-minute offset from the server time of the API endpoint.
Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.7+json
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:10:54 GMT
Authorization: Uploadcare public_key: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
SECRET_KEY = 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY'
# Specifying request type
verb = 'GET'
# Calculate [md5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5) checksum for the request's HTTP body.
# Note: Taking into account that in our example, we are sending an HTTP GET request,
# and the request does not have anything in its HTTP body, we use an empty string as an input to the md5 hash function.
# If we were to send an HTTP POST request with, for example, JSON in the request's body,
# we would have to pass the JSON as the input to the md5 hash function.
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-v0.7+json' \
    -H 'Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2018 13:14:41 GMT' \
    -H 'Authorization: Uploadcare YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY:SIGNATURE' \
    'https://api.uploadcare.com/files/?limit=1&stored=true'

Uploadcare.Simple

Note: We DO NOT recommend using this authentication method in production.

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

Accept: application/vnd.uploadcare-v0.7+json
Authorization: Uploadcare.Simple public_key:secret_key