.. _authentication:

Authenticate to the Rackspace Cloud
-------------------------------------

Whether you use cURL, a REST client, or a command line client (CLI) to send requests to 
the |apiservice|, you need an authentication token to include in the ``X-Auth-Token``  
header of each API request. 

With a valid token, you can send API requests to any of the API service endpoints that 
you are authorized to use. The authentication response includes a token expiration date. 
When a token expeires, you can send another authentication request to get a new one. 


.. note::
     For more information about authentication tokens, see the following topics in the
     Rackspace Cloud Identity developer documentation.

     - :rax-devdocs:`Authentication token operations <cloud-identity/v2/developer-guide/#document-api-operations/token-operations>`

        The examples in the Getting Started Guide show how to authenticate by using username and API key credentials,
        which is a more secure way to communicate with API services. The authentication
        token operations reference describes other types of credentials that you can use for
        authentication.

     - :rax-devdocs:`Manage tokens and token expiration <cloud-identity/v2/developer-guide/#manage-authentication-tokens>`

.. include:: ../common-gs/auth-using-curl.rst




                    

.. This is the intro to authenticate topic for API docs that have a Getting Started, move this file to the getting-started folder.

.. _authentication:

Authenticate to the Rackspace Cloud
-------------------------------------

Whether you use cURL, a REST client, or a command line client (CLI) to send requests to 
the |apiservice|, you need an authentication token to include in the ``X-Auth-Token``  
header of each API request. 

With a valid token, you can send API requests to any of the API service endpoints that 
you are authorized to use. The authentication response includes a token expiration date. 
When a token expeires, you can send another authentication request to get a new one. 


.. note::
     For more information about authentication tokens, see the following topics in the
     Rackspace Cloud Identity developer documentation.

     - :rax-devdocs:`Authentication token operations <cloud-identity/v2/developer-guide/#document-api-operations/token-operations>`

        The examples in the Getting Started Guide show how to authenticate by using username and API key credentials,
        which is a more secure way to communicate with API services. The authentication
        token operations reference describes other types of credentials that you can use for
        authentication.

     - :rax-devdocs:`Manage tokens and token expiration <cloud-identity/v2/developer-guide/#manage-authentication-tokens>`

.. include:: ../common-gs/auth-using-curl.rst




                    

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Add comment about where file goes

In API docs, this file goes in the getting-started folder.  Update the getting-started index.rst to make sure the file is included in the contents.