---
title: Authenticating to make calls to one of the platform REST APIs
description: Introductory guidance on calling and retrieving REST APIs
---

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# Authenticating to make calls to one of the platform REST APIs

## Introductory guidance on calling and retrieving REST APIs

 

**Read this article to understand how to:**

- Connect your Content Catalyst platform with other business-critical systems
- Improve the end-user experience and organisational processes with seamless integrations with 3rd party tools

 

To view the available endpoints, head to the **API and Integration Documentation** section via the admin area and select '**V1 Documentation**'.

 

![](https://guide.contentcatalyst.com/hs-fs/hubfs/API%20Menu%20Admin%20-png.png?width=555&height=637&name=API%20Menu%20Admin%20-png.png)

 

 

![](https://guide.contentcatalyst.com/hs-fs/hubfs/image-png-Aug-26-2025-01-42-32-6321-PM.png?width=670&height=210&name=image-png-Aug-26-2025-01-42-32-6321-PM.png)

 

🔔**See**: [API: Application Programming Interfaces](https://guide.contentcatalyst.com/api-application-programming-interfaces-overview?hsLang=en) article to familiarise yourself with API's in Content Catalyst. 

First use the POST Authenticate operation to retrieve an authentication token.

```
POST /Authenticate
```

You should provide the username and password for a user registered on the site.

All operations of the API will be limited by the access rights of the user. 

 

### Steps to authenticate:

1. Send request to https:///api/v1/authenticate?username=&password=
2. Retrieve string from the response body
3. Base64 encode the string and username in this format: 'username:string'
4. Make the call to required API, including a header containing "Authorization: Basic "

#### Python Requests example - authentication

```
import requestsimport base64api_key = requests.get('http:///api/v1/authenticate?username=&password=', headers={'Accept': 'application/json'})api_key = api_key.json()api_key = api_key.encode('utf-8')api_key = base64.b64encode('%s:%s' % (, api_key))
```

 

---

#### Python Requests example - resulting request

```
response = requests.put ('http:///api/v1//', headers={'Accept': 'application/json', 'Authorization': 'Basic cGlhZG1pbjAxOjd4bslNWM1hLTk1M2EtND£HnQ1Zi05NThkLWYwOTU1NTGRkOQ=='})
```

 

🔔 You can find further examples and information on the administrator portal, under Technical documentation. Select the **HTTP APIs** section and read the section on Authentication.

 

**🔔 For testing purposes, you can base64 encode strings online using:**

https://www.base64encode.org/

 

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