Okta Authentication works but Get User by Id gives Invalid Token Provided - okta

Question

I have a Django app that authenticates using Okta:
headers = {
'Authorization': 'SSWS {}'.format(<okta api token>),
'Accept': 'application/json',
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
}
authentication_payload = {
'username': <username>,
'password': <password>
}
response = requests.post(
<okta auth endpoint>,
headers=headers,
data=json.dumps(authentication_payload)
)
This works successfully. From the response content I am able to get the User Id:
content = json.loads(r.content.decode('utf-8'))
okta_user_id = content['_embedded']['user']['id']
I then use the okta_user_id to create the endpoint to get the okta user by id:
okta_user_endpoint = https://<org>.okta.com/api/v1/users/<okta_user_id>
I then use the same headers from the authentication call, with the same api token, and try to get the user by id:
user_response = requests.get(
okta_user_endpoint,
headers=headers
)
But this is unsuccessful. I get a 401 error with the following content:
{
"errorCode":"E0000011",
"errorSummary":"Invalid token provided",
"errorLink":"E0000011",
"errorCauses":[]
}
Seems straight forward with an invalid token, but if the token is invalid how am I able to successfully make the authentication call? And if the token if valid for the authentication call why is it not working to get the user by id?

Answer 1

Okta recently changed the way that the /authn endpoint works. The /authn endpoint no longer requires an authentication token. This was done in order to support single-page applications.
It looks like your application will need to be able to fetch user information on an arbitrary user. In that case, using an Okta API token makes sense.
However, if you were making that call from a single-page application, you would want to make a request to the /users/me API endpoint.