Sign In and Out

The first step to using the TSC library is to sign in to your Tableau Server (or Tableau Cloud). This page explains how to sign in, sign out, and switch sites, with examples for both Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud.

• Sign In
  • Sign in with Personal Access Token
  • Sign in with Username and Password
  • Sign in with JSON Web Token (JWT)
• Impersonation (Tableau Server only)
• Handling SSL certificates for Tableau Server
  • 405000 Method Not Allowed Response
• Sign Out
• Simplify by using Python with block
• Switch Site

Sign In

Signing in through tsc and the REST API can be done several different ways - in most cases only some of these options will be available, depending on your server configuration. You can see details of all the underlying APIs for authentication in the REST API documentation.

Examples for all supported methods are included below.

Note: When you sign in, the TSC library manages the authenticated session for you. However, the validity of the underlying credentials token is limited by the maximum session length set on your Tableau Server (2 hours by default).

Sign in with Personal Access Token

In most cases this is the preferred method because it improves security by avoiding the need to use or store passwords directly. Access tokens also expire by default if not used after 15 consecutive days. This option is available for Tableau Server 2019.4 and newer. Refer to Personal Access Tokens for more details.

To sign in to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud with a personal access token, you’ll need the following values:

This example illustrates using the above values to sign in with a personal access token, do some operations, and then sign out:

import tableauserverclient as TSC

tableau_auth = TSC.PersonalAccessTokenAuth('TOKEN_NAME', 'TOKEN_VALUE', 'SITENAME')
server = TSC.Server('https://SERVER_URL', use_server_version=True)
server.auth.sign_in(tableau_auth)

# Do awesome things here!

server.auth.sign_out()

Sign in with Username and Password

Direct sign in with account username and password. (This is no longer allowed for Tableau Cloud)

To sign in to Tableau Server with a username and password, you’ll need the following values:

This example illustrates using the above values to sign in with a username and password, do some operations, and then sign out:

import tableauserverclient as TSC

tableau_auth = TSC.TableauAuth('USERNAME', 'PASSWORD', 'SITENAME')
server = TSC.Server('https://SERVER_URL', use_server_version=True)
server.auth.sign_in(tableau_auth)

# Do awesome things here!

server.auth.sign_out()

Sign in with JSON Web Token (JWT)

If you have Connected Apps enabled, you can create JSON Web Tokens and use them to authenticate over the REST API. To learn about Connected Apps, read the docs on Tableau Connected Apps

To sign in to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud with a JWT, you’ll need to have created a Connected App and generated the token locally (see instructions to generate a JWT for your Connected App):

class JWTAuth(Credentials):
    def __init__(self, jwt=None, site_id=None, user_id_to_impersonate=None):

This example illustrates using the above values to sign in with a JWT, do some operations, and then sign out:

import tableauserverclient as TSC

tableau_auth = TSC.JWTAuth('JWT', 'SITENAME')
server = TSC.Server('https://SERVER_URL', use_server_version=True)
server.auth.sign_in(tableau_auth)

# Do awesome things here!

server.auth.sign_out()

Impersonation (Tableau Server only)

On Tableau Server, users with a Server Administrator role can sign in through the REST API and ‘impersonate’ another user - this may be to validate server permissions, to investigate user problems, or to perform actions on behalf of the user. This can be done in tsc with any type of authentication by adding an extra parameter (user_id_to_impersonate) to the TableauAuth object creation

e.g tableau_auth = TSC.PersonalAccessTokenAuth(‘TOKEN_NAME’, ‘TOKEN_VALUE’, ‘SITE_NAME’, ‘OTHER_USER_ID’) tableau_auth = TSC.JWTAuth(‘JWT_VALUE’, ‘SITE_NAME’, ‘OTHER_USER_ID’) tableau_auth = TSC.TSC.TableauAuth(‘USERNAME’, ‘PASSWORD’, ‘SITENAME’)

Handling SSL certificates for Tableau Server

If you’re connecting to a Tableau Server instance that uses self-signed or non-public SSL certificates, you may need to provide those as part of the sign in process. An example of this could be an on-premise Tableau Server that is using internally-generated SSL certificates. You may see an error like SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED if you connect with a Tableau Server but don’t have the SSL certificates configured correctly.

The solution here is to call server.add_http_options() and include the local path containing the SSL certificate file:

import tableauserverclient as TSC

tableau_auth = TSC.PersonalAccessTokenAuth('TOKEN_NAME', 'TOKEN_VALUE', 'SITENAME')
server = TSC.Server('https://SERVER_URL', use_server_version=True)
server.add_http_options({'verify': '/path/to/certfile.pem'})
server.auth.sign_in(tableau_auth)

# Do awesome things here!

server.auth.sign_out()

The TSC library uses the Python Requests library under the hood, so you can learn more about the verify option on the Python Requests advanced usage documentation.

You can also set verify to False to disable the SSL certificate verification step, but this is only useful for development and should not be used for real production work.

405000 Method Not Allowed Response

In some cases, you may find that sign in fails with a 405 message:

405000: Method Not Allowed
    The HTTP method 'GET' is not supported for the given resource

The most likely cause of this is signing in to a Tableau Server using the HTTP address which the server redirects to a secure HTTPS address. However, during the redirect the POST request turns into a GET request which is then considered an invalid method for the login entrypoint. (For security reasons, the server is following the standards correctly in this case).

The solution is to avoid the redirect by using the HTTPS URL for the site. For example, instead of:

server = TSC.Server('http://SERVER_URL')

Switch to the HTTPS (SSL) URL instead:

server = TSC.Server('https://SERVER_URL')

Sign Out

Signing out cleans up the current session and invalidates the authentication token being held by the TSC library.

As shown in the examples above, the sign out call is simply:

server.auth.sign_out()

Simplify by using Python with block

The sign in/out flow can be simplified (and handled in a more Python way) by using the built-in support for the with block. After the block execution completes, the sign out is called automatically.

For example:

import tableauserverclient as TSC

tableau_auth = TSC.PersonalAccessTokenAuth('TOKEN_NAME', 'TOKEN_VALUE', 'SITENAME')
server = TSC.Server('https://SERVER_URL')

with server.auth.sign_in(tableau_auth):
    all_wb, pagination_item = server.workbooks.get()
    print("\nThere are {} workbooks on site: ".format(pagination_item.total_available))
    for wb in all_wb:
        print(wb.id, wb.name)

All of the samples provided in TSC library use this technique.

Switch Site

Tableau Server has a feature which enables switching to another site without having to authenticate again. (The user must have access permissions for the new site as well.)

Note: This method is not available on Tableau Cloud.

The following example will switch the authenticated user to the NEW_SITENAME site on the same server:

# assume we already have an authenticated server object

server.auth.switch_site('NEW_SITENAME')