Sky API Authorization

Chris Behar

Hello,


I am trying to write a python program to poll the School API.


I am using the following test page which works great when I choose Authorization key in the Blackbaud OAuth 2.0 Service section. The problem is that key expires in an hour. same with the Implicit option. Selection No Auth option triggers an error. 

https://developer.sky.blackbaud.com/docs/services/school/operations/v1levelsget/console


How do I hand this rolling Authorization key in my program, any advice or help to point me in the right direction would be extremely helpful. Thank you!


Chris Behar


 

Steven Cinquegrana

Hi Chris‍ ,


You might want to do a Community search on "Authorization" or "Token"; there're plenty of posts about this topic, I can assure you.


In summary, you need to ensure that your Access Token is refreshed every 60 minutes if you're running an on-going process. If you're only intermittently making calls you'll need to refresh it before making calls if it has expired. You use the Refresh Token to get a new Access Token and, usually, a new Refresh Token, though you can persist the RT for up to a year if you have distributed apps, say, and don't want tokens to get out of sync. Generally, though, I'd stick to the default of a new RT per AT.


I assume that you've devoured the documentation on this topic so, cutting to the chase, you can either monitor your AT's life or simply refresh it on a call error and retry the call. The latter is somewhat better (IMHO) as it lets you also trap problems with lost/corrupt tokens, server outages/maintenance, etc, etc. And you will need to handle these if you want your app to be robust. Unfortunately, at times it can be difficult to determine the actual reason for non-response as the APIs are a little bit too keen on chucking the dreaded tells-you-nothing 500 Internal Server Error at you when they perhaps should not.


Have a read through this post as well where, near the end, I mention using our SKYLib.NET code library demo apps as a sanity check during your development (or perhaps in lieu of it).


I hope that helps.


Cheers,

Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions