How to Generate a Personal Access Token on GitHub

How to Generate a Personal Access Token on GitHub

GitHub is a web-based platform that has gained significant popularity amongst developers for code sharing and version control. One of the essential features that it provides is Personal Access Tokens (PATs), which are considered tokens for API authentication in GitHub. PATs are used to authenticate all API requests made to GitHub.com or GiHub Enterprise, representing the user that generated the token. In this blog, we’ll guide you through how to generate a Personal Access Token on GitHub and its benefits.

Creating a Personal Access Token on GitHub

The process of generating a PAT on GitHub is simple. Below are some steps that you should follow:

Step 1: Log in to your GitHub account and click on the user icon on the top-right corner of the page.

Step 2: From the dropdown list, click on the Settings option.

Step 3: On the Settings page, click on the Developer settings option located at the bottom of the menu on the left side of the page.

Step 4: Select the Personal Access Tokens option, and you’ll be directed to a page to create a new token.

Step 5: Click on the Generate new token button after giving the token a reasonable descriptive name that will help you identify it later.

Step 6: Check the scopes you’ll need to generate an access token. GitHub divides these into user scopes, repo scopes, and admin scopes.

Step 7: Once you’ve selected all the scopes needed and read and understood the generated token, click on the Generate token button at the bottom of the page to generate it finally.

Benefits of Personal Access Tokens

There are several benefits to having a personal access token on GitHub, including:

1. Enhanced Security: With a personal access token, you can authenticate all of your API requests with a token instead of a plain text password. So, it becomes more challenging to steal or hack access to your account.

2. Limiting Access: By selecting scopes when generating a personal access token, you can limit the access and permission of different apps and services.

3. Personal access tokens usage enables tasks automation without relying on user authentication through a browser, like RESTful or GraphQl calls, supported by some libraries.

In Conclusion

Personal access tokens are a great way to enhance security when authenticating your API requests through GitHub. By generating a token with defined scopes, you can limit the access of third-party integrations or collaborators to specific areas of your account. Creating and using personal access tokens on GitHub is essential for developers to work seamlessly and access data quickly from remote locations, without worrying about security.

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