OAuth authorization

Using OAuth 2.0 is necessary for developing apps that are available in the Pipedrive Marketplace. Authorization via OAuth 2.0 is a well-known and stable way to get fine-grained access to an API.

After registering the app, you must add the necessary server-side logic to your app to establish the OAuth flow.
Here’s a diagram showing the flow of authorization:

And here's a video to get you more acquainted with building apps with OAuth:

Step 1: Requesting authorization

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This step is necessary to implement only when you allow app installation outside of the Marketplace.

First, your app must start the authorization process. For that, you must redirect the customer’s web browser to make a request to the OAuth server’s /authorize endpoint:

GET https://oauth.pipedrive.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=b4d083d9216986345b32&state=148aHxbdd92&redirect_uri=https://awesomeapp.com/oauth/callback

The request must provide the following GET parameters:

Step 2: Customer authorizes the app

As a result of the request from Step 1, the customer will see a page with the confirmation dialog, which will present the details of your app (title, company name, icon) and explain the permission scopes that you have set for the app. Customers should confirm their wish to install the app by clicking "Allow and install" or deny authorization by clicking "Cancel".

Step 3: Callback to your app

After the customer accepts or denies your app installation, the browser will be redirected to your callback URL (which was registered with the app) with the result of the user’s action:

GET https://<your_callback_url>?code=123.456.2d73391055ca60cbf07f13aaaaf1207cfe33a4b605&state=148aHxbdd92

The following query parameters will be passed to the request:

Query parameter	Description
code	The authorization_code that was issued when the user agreed to the installation. You will need this code to exchange it for the access_token.
error	The error code (user_denied) is sent if the user denied installation. Code and error parameters are mutually exclusive!
state	The same value will be returned to your callback URL if the state was provided during the authorization request.

Step 4 and Step 5: Getting the tokens

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After the customer has clicked "Allow and install" in Step 2, make sure that the customer has created and logged into an account in your app before exchanging the authorization_code.

After the customer has confirmed the app installation, you will need to exchange the authorization_code to a pair of access and refresh tokens. Using an access token, you can access the user’s data.

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Note that the authorization_code expires in 5 minutes.

To exchange the authorization_code for the tokens, you must execute this HTTP request to the OAuth server:

POST https://oauth.pipedrive.com/oauth/token

The content-type for the request must be application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

To execute the request, your request has to be authenticated via HTTP Basic Auth with the values of the client_id and the client_secret (you can find the values like this).

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Note that authentication could also be done by providing values for the client_id and the client_secret in the request body, but it's not recommended. Use it only when you cannot use HTTP Basic Auth approach.

If all data is correct, you will receive a response with the JSON data:

JSON key name	Description
access_token	You need to use an access token for accessing the user's data via API. You will need to refresh the access token if theaccess_token becomes invalid.
token_type	The format of the token. Always "bearer".
refresh_token	A refresh token is needed when you refresh the access token. refresh_token will expire if it isn't used in 60 days. Each time refresh_token is used, its expiry date is reset back to 60 days.
scope	List of scopes to which users have agreed to grant access within this access_token.
expires_in	The maximum time in seconds until the access_token expires.
api_domain	The base URL path, including the company_domain, where the requests can be sent to.

Step 6: Using the tokens

When you have the tokens, you can execute API requests with access_token.

You need to add the company_domain to the request URL and provide the access_token in every request in the Authorization header:

GET https://{COMPANYDOMAIN}.pipedrive.com/api/v1/deals -H 'Authorization: Bearer 53289:1050268:4ae2dd99663e3a8e3bd04ba5d89a21850d6fa52d'

Remember that access_token is bound to the scopes your app asked permissions for from the user, so requests will be denied if they will be executed against the API endpoints that are not in these scopes.

For example, you can also use access_token to retrieve user’s data from the /users/me endpoint and then generate an account for this user using the received data. In this way, the user has an account on your app’s side and doesn’t need to worry about additional registrations.

Step 7: Refreshing the tokens

The access_token has a lifetime. After a period of time, which was returned to you in expires_in JSON property, the access_token will be invalid, and you can no longer use it to get data from our API. To refresh the access_token, you must use the refresh_token. You need to execute an HTTP request to the OAuth server:

POST https://oauth.pipedrive.com/oauth/token

Content-type for the request must be application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

If all data is correct, you will receive a response with the JSON data:

As the refresh_token expires when it hasn't been renewed during a 60-day period, you might encounter a situation when you’ll need to get a new refresh_token. In this case, the whole installation process needs to be started from the beginning with the user installing the app and you exchanging the authorization_code for access_token and refresh_token.