What is Postman?
Postman is a great software development tool that enables you to test APIs. Instead of writing code snippets, Postman allows you to format your API requests in a GUI and view the responses.
How can I configure Postman to test Smartcar's API?
You’ll need a few things to start making API calls with Smartcar:
Postman
You can download Postman here, then install it to your system.
Smartcar's Postman Collection
Smartcar offers a pre-configured set of all of our endpoints for Postman. You can download this set here.
Once downloaded, import the collection to Postman:
Smartcar Account
If you haven’t already signed up for a Smartcar account, you can do so from this signup link.
Grab your Client ID and Client Secret tokens when you sign in, and copy them to someplace secure. You’ll need those tokens a little later in this setup.
Getting an Access Token
Click the 3 dots on the Smartcar Collection you imported, then click Edit.
Now you'll need to fill in a few fields to successfully make your way through the Smartcar Connect Flow:
Under "Configure New Token":
- Token Name: smartcar_token
- Auth URL (live vehicle): https://connect.smartcar.com/oauth/authorize?approval_prompt=force
- Auth URL (test mode): https://connect.smartcar.com/oauth/authorize?approval_prompt=force&mode=test
- Access Token URL: https://connect.smartcar.com/oauth/token
- Client ID: Retrieve from your Smartcar Dashboard
- Client Secret: Retrieve from your Smartcar Dashboard
- Scope: Enter the list of permissions you want to request from your car. A complete list can be found here.
Then hit Get New Access Token. You'll be prompted to walk the through the Smartcar Connect Flow. If you want to follow along with the example we are using the read_vin, read_vehicle_info and read_loaction permissions, launching in Test Mode and selecting Ford as the Brand.
After stepping through the flow you'll see:
Hit Use Token. You should see Access Token under Current Token Populate with the access token from the popup:
Using this access token you can make requests to Smartcar's API.
NOTE: This access token is only valid for two hours. If you want to make API requests after the fact, you'll need to generate a fresh acces token by stepping through the connect flow as outlined above or get a new one using our Refresh Token Exchange.
Making a request to the API
The first thing you'll want to do is get a vehicle ID from /vehicles.
- Select Vehicle List
- Under Authorization change the type to Bearer Token
- If it does not auto populate, paste in your access token into the Token field and hit Send
Copy one of the IDs - 7cff9bf3-4ca6-4ef9-8e52-b916c171e760 in this case. Then click on Vehicle Location.
- Under Authorization change the type to "Bearer Token"
- If it does not auto populate, paste in your access token into the Token field
- In the URL replace {id} with the vehicle ID from the previous step and hit Send
That’s it! You've authorized permissions for a car and made a request to get it's location.