Getting started with the X API

Get an API key and make your first authenticated request in about ten minutes.

Create a developer account

Sign in at the X Developer Platform and create a Project and an App inside it. The App is what holds your keys. Note three values: the API Key, API Secret, and a Bearer Token for app-only requests.

Keep secrets out of client-side code. A Bearer token in a public web app can be scraped and abused, so proxy it through a small backend.

Your first request

App-only requests can read public data without a user logging in. Here is a public user lookup with plain fetch:

const res = await fetch("https://api.x.com/2/users/by/username/jack", {
  headers: { "Authorization": `Bearer ${BEARER_TOKEN}` }
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data); // { data: { id, name, username } }

What’s next

Reading public data is the easy half. To post, like, or read a user’s own timeline you need user-context auth (OAuth 2.0), which is the next chapter.