From Postman to Make - Integration with expiring access token

How To
1

I am building a connection to an accounting software. I am having trouble setting up the connection which uses an expiring access token.

It seems like it’s a hybrid between the different options in the HTTP module. But maybe I’m missing something.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Happy to pay for advice also.

The below setup works in Postman. So I know the setup is correct, but simply don’t know how to set it up in Make’s interface

Step 1: Get expiring access token

Post request to specified endpoint:

Auth type:

  • Auth type: API key
  • Key: Authorization
  • Value: Basic {api-key}
  • Add to: Header

Body:

  • grant_type=password&scope=read%20write&username={username}&password={password}

Result:

  • { “access_token”: “{acces_token}”, “token_type”: “Bearer”, “expires_in”: 3600, “refresh_token”: “” }

Step 2: Use response from step 1 as bearer token to hit any other endpoint

I now need to use the access_token (from the result) as a Bearer token. This will be the authentication to POST, GET etc. to any of the other API’s endpoints.

Looking forward to hearing any tips/advice!

2

Welcome to the Make community!

To do this, you can try using the HTTP “Make a Basic Auth request” module —

Sends an HTTP(S) request to a specified URL that requires Basic Auth authorization and processes the response.

Screenshot_2025-03-22_230316 - Copy

For more information, see https://www.make.com/en/integrations/http, and https://www.make.com/en/help/app/http in the help centre.

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any further questions or issues.

— @samliew

P.S.: Investing some effort into the Make Academy will save you lots of time and frustration using Make.

3

Thanks for your reply!

However, this will not work out for two reasons:

a) In the credentials, I will need to pass the “Basic {api-key}” as authorization also
b) In this way, I only can make one Post request. To get the token. But I need also to make another request to the endpoint where I will actually get/post data to.

So I need a way of authenticating where the credentials/connection is to one endpoint (the one you have under your URL) and in same step, I use the result from this request to authenticate my next request.

Maybe I missed something in your reply?

Thanks
Maja

4

You can put that in the “headers”.

That’s the way this external service has implemented authentication. It is not a “standard” form, like only basic auth, or API key, or OAuth.

Hence you appear to need to use one module solely to exchange the creds for the access token. If you can provide the link to the actual API documentation I can take a look.

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any further questions or issues.

— @samliew

P.S.: Investing some effort into the Make Academy will save you lots of time and frustration using Make.

2 Likes
5

Thanks a lot! Much appreciated you took the time to provide help.

With your help and the final missing piece with help from Jurian from www.greendigit.nl I finally managed to get the integration working.

1 Like