# Make API calls

Once you create your API token, all API requests are authorized in the same way. Cloudflare uses the RFC standard ↗ `Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>`

interface. An example request is shown below.

Never send or store your API token secret in plaintext. Also be sure not to check it into code repositories, especially public ones.

To format JSON output for readability in the command line, you can use a tool like `jq`

, a command-line JSON processor. For more information on obtaining and installing `jq`

, refer to Download jq ↗.

The following example will format the curl JSON output using `jq`

:

Every Cloudflare API element is fixed to a version number. The latest version is Version 4. The stable base URL for all Version 4 HTTPS endpoints is: `https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/`


For specific guidance on making API calls, refer to the following resources:

- The product's Developer Docs section for how-to guides.
- API schema docs for request and response payloads for each endpoint.
- The first-party libraries for Go ↗, TypeScript ↗, Python ↗, or Hashicorp's Terraform ↗.

Several Cloudflare endpoints have optional query parameters to filter incoming results, such as List Zones.

When adding those query parameters, make sure you enclose the URL in quotes `'`

(just like the header values), or the API call might error.

Sometimes there will be too many results to display via the default page size, for example you might receive the following:

There are two query parameter options, which can be combined to paginate across the results.

`page=x`

enables you to select a specific page.`per_page=xx`

enables you to adjust the number of results displayed on a page. If you select too many, you may get a timeout.

An example might be `https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/zone-identifier/dns_records?per_page=100&page=2`

.

Other options are:

`order`

: Select the attribute to order by.`direction`

: Either`ASC`

(ascending order) or`DESC`

(descending order).

The available options will be listed at the end of the `result_info`

of all endpoints in the API documentation.

Recent versions of Windows 10 and 11 already include the curl tool ↗ used in the developer documentation's API examples. If you are using a different Windows version, refer to Windows downloads ↗ in the curl website for more information on obtaining and installing this tool.

To use the Cloudflare API with curl on a Command Prompt window, you must use double quotes (`"`

) as string delimiters instead of single quotes (`'`

).

A typical `PATCH`

request will be similar to the following:

To escape a double quote character in a request body (for example, a body specified with `-d`

or `--data`

in a `POST`

/`PATCH`

request), prepend it with another double quote (`"`

) or a backslash (`\`

) character.

To break a single command in two or more lines, use `^`

as the line continuation character at the end of a line:

PowerShell has specific cmdlets (`Invoke-RestMethod`

and `ConvertFrom-Json`

) for making REST API calls and handling JSON responses. The syntax for these cmdlets is different from the curl examples provided in the developer documentation.

The following example uses the `Invoke-RestMethod`

cmdlet:

By default, the output will only contain the first level of the JSON object hierarchy (in the above example, the content of objects such as `hosts`

and `certificates`

is not shown). To show additional levels and format the output like the `jq`

tool, you can use the `ConvertFrom-Json`

cmdlet specifying the desired maximum depth (by default, `2`

):

You can also use the curl tool in PowerShell. However, in PowerShell `curl`

is an alias to the `Invoke-WebRequest`

cmdlet, which supports a different syntax from the usual curl tool. To use curl, enter `curl.exe`

instead.

A typical `PATCH`

request with curl will be similar to the following:

To escape a double quote (`"`

) character in a request body (specified with `-d`

or `--data`

), prepend it with another double quote (`"`

) or a backslash (`\`

). You must escape double quotes even when using single quotes (`'`

) as string delimiters.

To break a single command in two or more lines, use a backtick (```

) character as the line continuation character at the end of a line: