You can create a personal access token (PAT) to authenticate in the CLI or with the API.

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Creating a personal access token

To create a personal access token, head to the project settings, then to personal access tokens, then click generate token.

Everybody in your organization can create a personal access token (PAT). To provide additional security, we highly recommend adding an expiration to your personal access tokens.

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How to authenticate

Note that not all endpoints in the API will be accessible with PAT authentication.

The PAT authentication is done via the HTTP Authorization request header.

Authorization: ApiKey <token>

Examples:

curl --location --request GET 'https://my.lightdash.com/api/v1/org/projects' \
--header 'Authorization: ApiKey eeaa81d8bcd89a770bd8a581cabd052b'

GET /api/v1/org/projects HTTP/1.1
Host: my.lightdash.com
Authorization: ApiKey eeaa81d8bcd89a770bd8a581cabd052b

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Rotating a personal access token

To maintain security, you may want to rotate your personal access tokens periodically. Follow these steps to rotate an existing token.

Requirements for Rotation

  • Token UUID: To rotate a token, you’ll need its unique identifier (UUID), which you can find on the tokens page in your account settings.
  • Expiration Date: You must specify a new expiration date when rotating a token. Tokens without an expiration cannot be rotated.
  • Time Interval: Tokens can only be rotated once per hour.

Use the following curl command to rotate a personal access token. Replace <personal-access-token-uuid> with the UUID of the token you wish to rotate, and <personal-access-token> with your current token.

curl --location --request PATCH 'https://my.lightdash.com/api/v1/user/me/personal-access-tokens/<personal-access-token-uuid>/rotate' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: ApiKey <personal-access-token>' \
--data '{
    "expiresAt": "2025-12-13T16:10:04.976Z"
}'

This process will invalidate the previous token and return a new token with the specified expiration date.