NOTE:If you're running cURL on windows, you will have to change the single quotes to double quotes, and escape the inner double quotes with backslash, like below:
Using [personal access tokens](https://developers.mattermost.com/integrate/reference/personal-access-token/) is very similar to using a session token. The only real difference is that session tokens will expire, while personal access tokens will live until they are manually revoked by the user or an admin.
Just like session tokens, include the personal access token as part of the `Authorization` header in your requests using the `Bearer` method. Assuming our personal access token is `9xuqwrwgstrb3mzrxb83nb357a`, we could use it as shown below.
To connect to the WebSocket follow the standard opening handshake as [defined by the RFC specification](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455#section-1.3) to the `/api/v4/websocket` endpoint of Mattermost.
The Mattermost WebSocket can be authenticated using [the standard API authentication methods](/#/#authentication) (by a cookie or with an explicit Authorization header) or through an authentication challenge. If you're authenticating from a browser and have logged in with the Mattermost API, your authentication cookie should already be set. This is how the Mattermost webapp authenticates with the WebSocket.
WebSocket events are primarily used to alert the client to changes in Mattermost, such as delivering new posts or alerting the client that another user is typing in a channel.
The `event` field indicates the event type, `data` contains any data relevant to the event and `broadcast` contains information about who the event was sent to. For example, the above example has `user_id` set to "ay5sq51sebfh58ktrce5ijtcwy" meaning that only the user with that ID received this event broadcast. The `omit_users` field can contain an array of user IDs that were specifically omitted from receiving the event.
This is an example of making a `user_typing` request, with the purpose of alerting the server that the connected client has begun typing in a channel or thread. The `action` field indicates what is being requested, and performs a similar duty as the route in a HTTP API. The `data` field is used to add any additional data along with the request. The server supports binary websocket messages as well in case the client has such a requirement.
The `seq` or sequence number is set by the client and should be incremented with every use. It is used to distinguish responses to requests that come down the WebSocket. For example, a standard response to the above request would be:
To see how these actions work, please refer to either the [Golang WebSocket driver](https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/server/public/model/websocket_client.go) or our [JavaScript WebSocket driver](https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/blob/master/webapp/platform/client/src/websocket.ts).
For community-built drivers and API wrappers, see [our app directory](https://mattermost.com/marketplace-category/mattermost-developers-tools/).
## Support
Mattermost core committers work with the community to keep the API documentation up-to-date.
If you have questions on API routes not listed in this reference, you can:
- [Join the Mattermost community server](https://community.mattermost.com) to ask questions in the Developers channel
- Contact us at feedback@mattermost.com
[Bug reports](https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues) in the documentation or the API are also welcome, as are pull requests to fix the issues.
## Contributing
When you have answers to API questions not addressed in our documentation we ask you to consider making a pull request to improve our reference. Small and large changes are all welcome.
We also have [Help Wanted tickets](https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AArea%2FAPI) available for community members who would like to help others more easily use the APIs. We acknowledge everyone's contribution in the [release notes of our next version](https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/changelog.html#contributors).
The source code for this API reference is hosted at https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/api.
Endpoints for creating, getting and interacting with users.
When using endpoints that require a user id, the string `me` can be used in place of the user id to indicate the action is to be taken for the logged in user.
- name:bots
description:Endpoints for creating, getting and updating bot users.
- name:teams
description:Endpoints for creating, getting and interacting with teams.
- name:channels
description:Endpoints for creating, getting and interacting with channels.
- name:posts
description:Endpoints for creating, getting and interacting with posts.
- name:files
description:Endpoints for uploading and interacting with files.
- name:uploads
description:Endpoints for creating and performing file uploads.
