Try our APIs and SDKs

You've seen how Okta handles sign-in for your app and how you can use the Developer Console to manage users. Okta offers much more, including a large set of APIs your software can interact with, either directly, through REST calls, or by means of SDKs that support various coding languages.

Get an API token

To secure access to API endpoints, Okta requires an API token consisting of a secret value to be included in the header of each request.

To obtain an API token, use the Developer Console:

1. Select Tokens from the API menu.

2. Click Create Token.

3. Name your token and click Create Token.

4. Record the token value. This is the only opportunity to see it and record it.

For full details on API tokens, see Create an API token.

Create a user by API

To create an additional end user in your org, you can make a REST API call to the /users endpoint.

The full URL of the endpoint needs to begin with your Okta domain. That should be followed by the specific path for this endpoint, which is /api/v1/users. For example: https://dev-133337.okta.com/api/v1/users.

To create a new user, you make a POST call to that endpoint, supplying information about the new user in a JSON object in the request body.

You need to include your API token in the Authorization header of the request.

Here's how you would do it using curl from the command line:

curl -v -X POST \
-H "Accept: application/json" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: SSWS 00QCjAl4MlV-WPXM...0HmjFx-vbGua" \
-d '{
  "profile": {
    "firstName": "Isaac",
    "lastName": "Brock",
    "email": "isaac.brock@example.com",
    "login": "isaac.brock@example.com",
    "mobilePhone": "555-415-1337"
  }
}' "https://dev-33337.okta.com/api/v1/users?activate=false"

In the above example, you'd need to replace the Okta domain in the URL with your own Okta domain. You'd also need to replace the API token in the Authorization header with the API token you created. Note that the value of the API token needs to be prefaced with SSWS followed by a space.

For full details of the /users API and everything it can do, see the Users API reference page.

For information on using Postman to explore Okta APIs, see Use Postman with the Okta REST APIs.

Create a user by SDK

Instead of making REST API calls directly, you can use one of the Okta SDKs provided for specific languages and frameworks.

For example, to create a user with the Java SDK, you could use the following code:

User user = UserBuilder.instance()
    .setEmail("joe.coder@example.com")
    .setFirstName("Joe")
    .setLastName("Code")
    .buildAndCreate(client);

The Java SDK and its documentation are available at its GitHub Repository.

See Languages & SDKs for information on getting started with a variety of Okta SDKs.