How to write a python script to authenticate to Azure DevOps REST API and get the access token?

Question

How can I authenticate to Azure DevOps REST API in a python script? I found that there are 2 methods :

• Using personal access token (PAT)
• Using OAuth 2.0

I am using the second method. Followed the steps in this documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/integrate/get-started/authentication/oauth?view=azure-devops

I wrote this function to autherize to azure DevOps using OAuth 2.0:

def get_authenticated():

    client_id = < my client ID as a string >
    state = "user1"
    scope = "vso.graph_manage%20vso.identity_manage%20vso.profile_write%20vso.project_manage%20vso.tokenadministration%20vso.tokens"
    callback_URL = < Callback URL to my azure devops account >

    # Azure DevOps Services authorization endpoint
    Auth_URL = "https://app.vssps.visualstudio.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=" + client_id + "&response_type=Assertion&state=" + state + "&scope=" + scope + "&redirect_uri=" + callback_URL
    headers = {'Accept': 'application/json;api-version=1.0'}

    print(Auth_URL)

    response = requests.get(Auth_URL,headers = headers)
    print(response)
    print(response.status_code)
    print(response.headers['content-type'])

    response.raise_for_status() 

But when calling this function, output I am getting is:

<Response [203]>
203
text/html; charset=utf-8

The auth URL is correct because when I tried to access the same URL in a browser it successfully redirects to a form to enter azure user credentials.

The expected behavior of the script is, when the auth_url is requested, Azure DevOps Services should ask the user to authorize. I think that should be done by prompting for username&password in terminal/via a browser.

I am totally new to python scripting and REST APIs. Can someone help me by pointing out the faults in my code or pointing to some samples?

Answer 1

The http error 203 indicates that the returned metainformation is not a definitive set of the object from a server with a copy of the object, but is from a private overlaid web. In your code,you added headers = {'Accept': 'application/json;api-version=1.0'} , but in fact the content type should be application/x-www-form-urlencoded .

You can use some OAuth2 library for python to authenticate to Azure DevOps REST API, such as OAuthLib . It includes sevelral samples.

Also, you can refer to following topic, hope it is helpful for you.

Tutorial for using requests_oauth2