title: API: Provide an access token
role: manual
tags: #api #manual #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001012000000 00001012080500
backward: 00001012000000 00001012080500
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20210126175322
forward: 00001012050200 00001012921000
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20250701134911
published: 20250701134911
visibility: public

The [authentication process](00001012050200) provides you with an [access token](00001012921000).
Most API calls need such an access token, so that they know the identity of the caller.

You send the access token in the &ldquo;Authorization&rdquo; request header field, as described in [RFC 6750, section 2.1](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6750#section-2.1).
You need to use the &ldquo;Bearer&rdquo; authentication scheme to transmit the access token.

For example (in plain text HTTP):

    GET /z HTTP/1.0
    Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzUxMiJ9.eyJfdGsiOjEsImV4cCI6MTYwMTczMTI3NSwiaWF0IjoxNjAxNzMwNjc1LCJzdWIiOiJhYmMiLCJ6aWQiOiIyMDIwMTAwMzE1MDEwMCJ9.ekhXkvn146P2bMKFQcU-bNlvgbeO6sS39hs6U5EKfjIqnSInkuHYjYAIfUqf_clYRfr6YBlX5izii8XfxV8jhg

Note, that there is exactly one space character (&ldquo;` `&rdquo;, U+0020) between the string &ldquo;Bearer&rdquo; and the access token: `Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzUxMiJ9.ey...`.

If you use the [curl](https://curl.se/) tool, you can use the `-H` command line parameter to set this header field.