Authentication

In this section, we're going to focus on the basics of two ConvertAPI authentication methods.

There are two options to authenticate to v2.convertapi.com:

• Secret - Can be used to authenticate requests from the code that is not accessible for the user (server-side software like PHP). A Secret key can be found in the Control Panel.
• Token - Can be used to authenticate requests from the code that is accessible for the user (client-side software like JavaScript on the web browser). Tokens can be requested by the API call or generated using Secret.

Token

Request Token

The token request accepts URL query parameters. In order to make a virtually non-expiring token that can be used instead of a secret key to authenticate your requests, simply set the Lifetime and RequestCount to it's highest values.

• Secret - your secret key.
• RequestCount - restrict how many requests can be made using a single token. The default is 1 and the maximum can be set to 999999999 requests.
• Lifetime - the token lifetime in seconds. The default is 3600 seconds(1h) and the maximum can be set to 315569520 seconds (10 years).
• Count - specify how many tokens will be created by the request, the default is 1 token.

[POST] 
https://v2.convertapi.com/token/create?Secret=XXXX&RequestCount=3&Lifetime=10000&Count=2

[response]
{
    "Tokens": [
        {
            "Id": "4X4RxBGP",
            "ValidUntil": "2017-08-22T16:45:24.6184076Z"
        },
        {
            "Id": "mKRuP5zW",
            "ValidUntil": "2017-08-22T16:45:24.6184076Z"
        }
    ]
}

Token usage

[POST] 
https://v2.convertapi.com/convert/doc/to/pdf?Token=4X4RxBGP

Delete token

You can leave the token to expire or delete it right away. Please note: your secret key must be provided in the delete request to prevent malicious requests.

[DELETE] 
https://v2.convertapi.com/token/4X4RxBGP?Secret=XXXX

Generate Token

Token generation algorithm steps:

• Create token string: tokenUuid|expireTimeStamp|userIp|requestCount.
  • tokenUuid - random 8 bytes alphanumeric string.
  • expireTimeStamp - token expiration time in Unix timestamp format.
  • userIp - IP address that can use this token (leave blank if you don’t want to restrict).
  • requestCount - request count that can be made using this token.
• Encrypt token string with AES encryption algorithm using your secret as the encryption key, an initialization vector (IV) should be "//convertapi.com".
• Encode an encrypted string using the Base64 algorithm.

Token generation code example

public static class SelfGeneratedToken
{
    private const int TokenLength = 8;

    private static string GenerateUniqueString(int length)
    {
        var bytes = new byte[100];
        var rng = RandomNumberGenerator.Create();
        rng.GetBytes(bytes);
        return new string(Convert.ToBase64String(bytes).Where(char.IsLetterOrDigit).Take(length).ToArray());
    }

    private static AesCryptoServiceProvider AesCryptoServiceProvider(string secret)
    {
        var aesCsp = new AesCryptoServiceProvider
        {
            BlockSize = 128,
            IV = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("//convertapi.com"),
            Key = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(secret)
        };
        return aesCsp;
    }

    private static string UrlBase64Encode(byte[] bytes)
    {
        return Convert.ToBase64String(bytes).Replace('+', '-').Replace('/', '_').TrimEnd('=');
    }

    public static string Create(string secret, TimeSpan validityDuration, string userIp, int? requestCount)
    {
        var expireTimeStamp = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.ToUnixTimeSeconds() + validityDuration.TotalSeconds;
        var tokenUuid = GenerateUniqueString(TokenLength);
        var tokenDataString = $"{tokenUuid}|{expireTimeStamp}|{userIp}|{requestCount}";

        var tokenDataBytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(tokenDataString);
        var aesCsp = AesCryptoServiceProvider(secret);
        var encryptedTokenData = aesCsp.CreateEncryptor().TransformFinalBlock(tokenDataBytes, 0, tokenDataBytes.Length);
        return UrlBase64Encode(encryptedTokenData);
    }
}

Self generated token must be used together with the ApiKey parameter. ApiKey can be found in Control Panel.

Token usage

[POST] 
https://v2.convertapi.com/convert/docx/to/pdf?ApiKey=0000000000&Token=E1vYBWy7TAabnFSReCTJGiFUx3xoCJiyIwbPWvuRpcM=

HTTP Response Codes

• 200 Ok

  • 2000 Token created successfully.
  • 2001 Token deleted successfully.

• 401 Unauthorized Authentication failure.

  • 4010 Invalid user credentials - bad secret.
  • 4011 Invalid user credentials - bad token.
  • 4012 Invalid user credentials - bad self generated token.
  • 4013 User credentials not set, secret or token must be passed.
  • 4014 User inactive.