Beginners guide

Jira REST APIs

Jira has REST APIs and Java APis that you can use to interact with Jira. For example, you may want to integrate your existing application with Jira or write a script to get information from Jira. For more information, check out our reference documentation:

• Jira REST APIs
• Jira Java APIs
• Jira front-end APIs

Authentication

The following authentication methods are supported for the Jira REST APIs:

• Recommended:
  • OAuth 2.0 - This method provides APIs to allow external services to access resources on a user's behalf with the OAuth 2.0 protocol. This protocol is not compatible with Oauth 1.0a.
  • Personal access token (PAT) - This method incorporates the user account in the access token. It is a safe alternative to using username and password for authentication with various services.
• Other:
  • OAuth 1.0a - This method provides APIs to allow external services to access resources on a user's behalf with the OAuth 1.0 protocol. This protocol is deprecated.
  • Basic HTTP - This method is only recommended for tools like scripts or bots. It is easier to implement but much less secure.

Jira uses cookie-based authentication in the browser, so you can call the REST API from Javascript on the page and rely on the authentication the browser has established. To reproduce the behavior of the Jira log-in page, you can POST to the /auth/1/session resource. You can use it, for example, to display authentication error messages to users.

API Calls:

Backlog

curl --request POST \
  --url 'http://{baseurl}/rest/agile/1.0/backlog/issue' \
  --user 'email@example.com:<api_token>' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json'

// This code sample uses the 'node-fetch' library:
// https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-fetch
const fetch = require('node-fetch');

fetch('http://{baseurl}/rest/agile/1.0/backlog/issue', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Authorization': `Basic ${Buffer.from(
      'email@example.com:<api_token>'
    ).toString('base64')}`,
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
  }
})
  .then(response => {
    console.log(
      `Response: ${response.status} ${response.statusText}`
    );
    return response.text();
  })
  .then(text => console.log(text))
  .catch(err => console.error(err));

# This code sample uses the 'requests' library:
# http://docs.python-requests.org
import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth

url = "http://{baseurl}/rest/agile/1.0/backlog/issue"

auth = HTTPBasicAuth("email@example.com", "<api_token>")

headers = {
  "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

response = requests.request(
   "POST",
   url,
   headers=headers,
   auth=auth
)

print(response.text)

Boards

curl --request GET \
  --url 'http://{baseurl}/rest/agile/1.0/board' \
  --user 'email@example.com:<api_token>' \
  --header 'Accept: application/json'

Jira architecture

Atlassian's architecture documentation will help you understand Jira fundamentals and get a high-level perspective of Jira's dependencies.

It covers such topics as webhooks, web panels, web fragments, authentication, and templates.

Learn more about Jira architecture