What is the checklist for calling the Sharepoint API to access a file?

Question

Good day,

I have a question regarding the Sharepoint API. I would like to access an Excel file in SharePoint, using a PostMan. What are the checklist of things I need to ensure?

1. Make sure there is a registered app. I need the tenant, client id, and secret value to make requests.
2. Make sure the app has the appropriate permissions. I need Microsoft Graph (File.Read.All, User.Read) and SharePoint (Site.Read.All)
3. Make sure the file is in the correct folder. I can copy the full path from SharePoint and it will look like this.

      https://mysite.sharepoint.com/sites/mysite/folder1/folder2/filename.txt
      
   

4. Now I can finally login, save the access token, and then use that to download the file from SharePoint. Follow the examples here

Am I missing some steps? I tried this and it still says 401 Unauthorized, so I think I forgot something.

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

Hi @Jon A,

The azure ad app is for Graph api access sharepoint data. If you are using SharePoint rest api, I would recommend you to use Sharepoint app only to access sharepoint. Please refer to the following steps

https://anoopt.medium.com/accessing-sharepoint-data-using-postman-sharepoint-rest-api-76b70630bcbf

If you want to use azure ad app, I would recommend you to use graph api like following article

https://www.merge.dev/blog/sharepoint-rest-api-postman-get-files

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