Generating developer tokens

Create a JSON Web Token to authorize your requests to the Apps and Books for Organizations API.

Overview

The header of every Apps and Books for Organizations API request requires authorization in the form of a developer token. A developer token is a signed token that authenticates you as a trusted developer and member of the Apple Developer Program.

Construct your developer token

The Apps and Books for Organizations API supports the JSON Web Token (JWT) specification, so you can pass statements and metadata called claims. For more information, see the JWT specification and the available libraries for generating signed JWTs.

Use your developer account to create a Services identifier and obtain a key ID and to locate your Team ID.

Construct a developer token as a JSON object whose header contains:

alg: The algorithm you use to sign the token, which must have a value of ES256.
kid: A 10-character key ID obtained from your developer account.

In the claims payload of the token, include:

iss: The issuer registered claim key, a 10-character Team ID obtained from your developer account.
iat: The issued at registered claim key, which indicates the time at which the token was generated, in terms of the number of seconds since epoch, in UTC.
exp: The expiration time registered claim key, whose value must not be greater than 15777000 (6 months in seconds) from the current UNIX time on the server.
origin: (Optional) The origin claim, recommended for web clients. Only use this JWT if the origin header of the request matches one of the values in the array. This addition helps prevent unauthorized use of the tokens. For example: “origin”:[”https://example.com”,”https://music.example.com”].

A decoded developer token has the following format:

{
     "alg": "ES256",
     "kid": "ABC123DEFG"
}
{
     "iss": "DEF123GHIJ",
     "iat": 1437179036,
     "exp": 1493298100
}

After you create the token, sign it with your private key using the ES256 algorithm.

Authorize requests

If you manage request authorization directly, in all requests, pass the Authorization: Bearer header set to the developer token.

curl -v -H 'Authorization: Bearer [developer token]' "https://api.ent.apple.com/v1/test"

For more information about requests, responses, and error handling, see Handling requests and responses.

Limit request rate

The Apps and Books for Organizations API limits the number of requests your app can make using a developer token within a specific period of time. If you exceed this limit, you’ll temporarily receive 429 Too Many Requests error responses for requests that use the token. This error resolves itself shortly after the request rate has reduced.