access_tokens.md

Access Tokens

All Mapbox APIs require an access token. Thus all service object constructors take an access_token keyword argument. Access can be granted to a geocoding service, for example, like so:

>>> from mapbox import Geocoder
>>> geocoder = Geocoder(access_token="pk.YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN")

Please note that an actual token string must be used. Tokens may be generated using the web application at https://www.mapbox.com/account/access-tokens.

Your Mapbox access token can also be set in the environment of your program

export MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN="pk.YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"

and it will be found automatically when creating a new instance. We'll use the Geocoder in this example but the same applies for all mapbox classes.

>>> geocoder = Geocoder()
>>> import os
>>> geocoder.session.params['access_token'] == os.environ['MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN']
True

Best practice for access tokens and geocoding sources is to create a new instance for each new access token or source dataset.

Special considerations

You access token can be associated with different scopes. TODO How to get an access token. TODO