Each request made to the API must include authentication details. Service API uses the HTTP Basic Access Authentication method.
Basic access authentication
Basic access authentication is a method for a HTTP user agent to provide a user name and password when making a request. HTTP Basic authentication implementation is one of the easiest methods to use as it doesn’t require cookies, session handling, or a login sequence. HTTP Basic authentication simply uses static headers.
The user agent sends the authentication credentials by using the Authorization header. The header is constructed as follows:
- Merchant ID and API key are combined into a string “merchant_id:api_key”
- The resulting string is then encoded using Base64
- The authorization method and a space i.e. “Basic ” is then put before the encoded string.
For example, if ‘12345’ is your merchant ID and ‘xyz123’ is the API key then the header is formed as follows:
Authorization: Basic MTIzNDU6eHl6MTIz
You can generate the API key by navigating to merchant dashboard and clicking the "API" tab. If there are no API keys present you can generate one by clicking "Add new entry".
Merchant ID can be viewed by clicking one of the API keys.
To generate the Base64 encoded string, you can utilize tools like https://www.base64encode.org as an example.