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
  • 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 can be done two different ways:

• Personal Access Tokens - 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.
• Username and Password - Direct sign in with account username and password.

Examples showing both of these cases 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

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

To sign in to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud 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()

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')