Overview

Secure authentication is available either as a user with role-based permissions, or as an integration with a single standard set of permissions designed to support common publishing workflows.

The API is RESTful with predictable resource URLs, standard HTTP verbs, response codes and authentication used throughout. Requests and responses are JSON-encoded with consistent patterns and inline relations and responses are customisable using powerful query parameters.

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API Clients

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JavaScript Client Library

We’ve developed an API client for JavaScript, that simplifies authenticating with the admin API, and makes reading and writing data a breeze. The client is designed for use with integrations, supporting token authentication and the endpoints available to integrations.

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Structure

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Base URL

https://{admin_domain}/ghost/api/admin/

All admin API requests start with this base URL. Your admin domain can be different to your main domain, and may include a subdirectory. Using the correct domain and protocol are critical to getting consistent behaviour, particularly when dealing with CORS in the browser. All Ghost(Pro) blogs have a *.ghost.io domain as their admin domain and require https.

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Accept-Version Header

Accept-Version: v{major}.{minor}

Use the Accept-Version header to indicate the minimum version of Ghost’s API to operate with. See API Versioning for more details.

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JSON Format

The API uses a consistent JSON structure for all requests and responses:

{
    "resource_type": [{
        ...
    }],
    "meta": {}
}

• resource_type: will always match the resource name in the URL. All resources are returned wrapped in an array, with the exception of /site/ and /settings/.
• meta: contains pagination information for browse requests.

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Composing requests

When composing JSON payloads to send to the API as POST or PUT requests, you must always use this same format, unless the documentation for an endpoint says otherwise.

Requests with JSON payloads require the Content-Type: application/json header. Most request libraries have JSON-specific handling that will do this for you.

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Pagination

All browse endpoints are paginated, returning 15 records by default. You can use the page and limit parameters to move through the pages of records. The response object contains a meta.pagination key with information on the current location within the records:

"meta": {
    "pagination": {
      "page": 1,
      "limit": 2,
      "pages": 1,
      "total": 1,
      "next": null,
      "prev": null
    }
  }

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Parameters

Query parameters provide fine-grained control over responses. All endpoints accept include and fields. Browse endpoints additionally accept filter, limit, page and order. Some endpoints have their own specific parameters.

The values provided as query parameters MUST be url encoded when used directly. The client library will handle this for you.

For more details see the Content API.

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Filtering

See the Content API.

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Errors

See the Content API.

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Authentication

There are three methods for authenticating with the Admin API: integration token authentication, staff access token authentication and user authentication. Most applications integrating with the Ghost Admin API should use one of the token authentication methods.

The JavaScript Admin API Client supports token authentication and staff access token authentication.

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Choosing an authentication method

Integration Token authentication is intended for integrations that handle common workflows, such as publishing new content, or sharing content to other platforms.

Using tokens, you authenticate as an integration. Each integration can have associated API keys & webhooks and are able to perform API requests independently of users. Admin API keys are used to generate short-lived single-use JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), which are then used to authenticate a request. The API Key is secret, and therefore this authentication method is only suitable for secure server side environments.

Staff access token authentication is intended for clients where different users login and manage various resources as themselves, without having to share their password.

Using a token found in a user’s settings page you authenticate as a specific user with their role-based permissions. You can use this token the same way you would use an integration token.

User authentication is intended for fully-fledged clients where different users login and manage various resources as themselves.

Using an email address and password, you authenticate as a specific user with their role-based permissions. Via the session API, credentials are swapped for a cookie-based session, which is then used to authenticate further API requests. Provided that passwords are entered securely, user-authentication is safe for use in the browser. User authentication requires support for second factor authentication codes.

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Permissions

Integrations have a restricted set of fixed permissions allowing access to certain endpoints e.g. GET /users/ or POST /posts/. The full set of endpoints that integrations can access are those listed as endpoints on this page.

User permissions (whether using staff tokens or user authentication) are dependent entirely on their role. You can find more details in the team management guide. Authenticating as a user with the Owner or Admin role will give access to the full set of API endpoints. Many endpoints can be discovered by inspecting the requests made by Ghost Admin, the endpoints listed on this page are those stable enough to document.

There are two exceptions: Staff tokens cannot transfer ownership or delete all content.

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Token Authentication

Token authentication is a simple, secure authentication mechanism using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs). Each integration and staff user is issued with an admin API key, which is used to generate a JWT token and then provided to the API via the standard HTTP Authorization header.

The admin API key must be kept private, therefore token authentication is not suitable for browsers or other insecure environments, unlike the Content API key.

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Key

Admin API keys can be obtained by creating a new Custom Integration under the Integrations screen in Ghost Admin. Keys for individual users can be found on their respective profile page.

Admin API keys are made up of an id and secret, separated by a colon. These values are used separately to get a signed JWT token, which is used in the Authorization header of the request:

curl -H "Authorization: Ghost $token" -H "Accept-Version: $version" https://{admin_domain}/ghost/api/admin/{resource}/

The Admin API JavaScript client handles all the technical details of generating a JWT from an admin API key, meaning you only have to provide your url, version and key to start making requests.

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Token Generation

If you’re using a language other than JavaScript, or are not using our client library, you’ll need to generate the tokens yourself. It is not safe to swap keys for tokens in the browser, or in any other insecure environment.

There are a myriad of libraries available for generating JWTs in different environments.

JSON Web Tokens are made up of a header, a payload and a secret. The values needed for the header and payload are:

// Header
{
    "alg": "HS256",
    "kid": {id}, // ID from your API key
    "typ": "JWT"
}

// Payload
{
    // Timestamps are seconds sine the unix epoch, not milliseconds
    "exp": {timestamp}, // Max 5 minutes after 'now'
    "iat": {timestamp}, // 'now' (max 5 minutes after 'exp')
    "aud": "/admin/"
}

The libraries on https://jwt.io all work slightly differently, but all of them allow you to specify the above required values, including setting the signing algorithm to the required HS-256. Where possible, the API will provide specific error messages when required values are missing or incorrect.

Regardless of language, you’ll need to:

1. Split the API key by the : into an id and a secret
2. Decode the hexadecimal secret into the original binary byte array
3. Pass these values to your JWT library of choice, ensuring that the header and payload are correct.

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Token Generation Examples

These examples show how to generate a valid JWT in various languages & JWT libraries. The bash example shows step-by-step how to create a token without using a library.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Admin API key goes here
KEY="YOUR_ADMIN_API_KEY"

# Split the key into ID and SECRET
TMPIFS=$IFS
IFS=':' read ID SECRET <<< "$KEY"
IFS=$TMPIFS

# Prepare header and payload
NOW=$(date +'%s')
FIVE_MINS=$(($NOW + 300))
HEADER="{\"alg\": \"HS256\",\"typ\": \"JWT\", \"kid\": \"$ID\"}"
PAYLOAD="{\"iat\":$NOW,\"exp\":$FIVE_MINS,\"aud\": \"/admin/\"}"

# Helper function for performing base64 URL encoding
base64_url_encode() {
    declare input=${1:-$(</dev/stdin)}
    # Use `tr` to URL encode the output from base64.
    printf '%s' "${input}" | base64 | tr -d '=' | tr '+' '-' | tr '/' '_'
}

# Prepare the token body
header_base64=$(base64_url_encode "$HEADER")
payload_base64=$(base64_url_encode "$PAYLOAD")

header_payload="${header_base64}.${payload_base64}"

# Create the signature
signature=$(printf '%s' "${header_payload}" | openssl dgst -binary -sha256 -mac HMAC -macopt hexkey:$SECRET | base64_url_encode)

# Concat payload and signature into a valid JWT token

TOKEN="${header_payload}.${signature}"

# Make an authenticated request to create a post
curl -H "Authorization: Ghost $TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Accept-Version: v3.0" \
-d '{"posts":[{"title":"Hello world"}]}' \
"http://localhost:2368/ghost/api/admin/posts/"

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Staff access token authentication

Staff access token authentication is a simple, secure authentication mechanism using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) to authenticate as a user. Each user can create and refresh their own token, which is used to generate a JWT token and then provided to the API via the standard HTTP Authorization header. For more information on usage, please refer to the token authentication section.

The staff access token must be kept private, therefore staff access token authentication is not suitable for browsers or other insecure environments.

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User Authentication

User Authentication is an advanced, session-based authentication method that should only be used for applications where the user is present and able to provide their credentials.

Authenticating as a user requires an application to collect a user’s email and password. These credentials are then swapped for a cookie, and the cookie is then used to maintain a session.

Requests to create a session may require new device verification or two-factor auth. In this case an auth code is sent to the user’s email address, and that must be provided in order to verify the session.

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Creating a Session

The session and authentication endpoints have custom payloads, different to the standard JSON resource format.

POST /admin/session/

Request

To create a new session, send a username and password to the sessions endpoint, in this format:

// POST /admin/session/
{
    "username": "{email address}",
    "password": "{password}"
}

This request should also have an Origin header. See CSRF protection for details.

Success Response

201 Created: A successful session creation will return HTTP 201 response with an empty body and a set-cookie header, in the following format:

set-cookie: ghost-admin-api-session={session token}; Path=/ghost; Expires=Mon, 26 Aug 2019 19:14:07 GMT; HttpOnly; SameSite=Lax

2FA Response

403 Needs2FAError: In many cases, session creation will require an auth code to be provided. In this case you’ll get a 403 and the message User must verify session to login.

This response still has the set-cookie header in the above format, which should be used in the request to provide the token:

Verification Request

To send the authentication token

// PUT /admin/session/verify/
{
  "token": "{auth code}"
}

To request an auth token to be resent:

// POST /admin/session/verify/
{}

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Making authenticated API requests

The provided session cookie should be provided with every subsequent API request:

• When making the request from a browser using the fetch API, pass credentials: 'include' to ensure cookies are sent.
• When using XHR you should set the withCredentials property of the xhr to true
• When using cURL you can use the --cookie and --cookie-jar options to store and send cookies from a text file.

CSRF Protection

Session-based requests must also include either an Origin (preferred) or a Referer header. The value of these headers is checked against the original session creation requests, in order to prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) in a browser environment. In a browser environment, these headers are handled automatically. For server-side or native apps, the Origin header should be sent with an identifying URL as the value.

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Session-based Examples

# cURL

# Create a session, and store the cookie in ghost-cookie.txt
curl -c ghost-cookie.txt -d username=me@site.com -d password=secretpassword \
   -H "Origin: https://myappsite.com" \
   -H "Accept-Version: v3.0" \
   https://demo.ghost.io/ghost/api/admin/session/

# Use the session cookie to create a post
curl -b ghost-cookie.txt \
   -d '{"posts": [{"title": "Hello World"}]}' \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   -H "Accept-Version: v3.0" \
   -H "Origin: https://myappsite.com" \
   https://demo.ghost.io/ghost/api/admin/posts/

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Endpoints

These are the endpoints & methods currently available to integrations. More endpoints are available through user authentication. Each endpoint has a stability index, see versioning for more information.