Tumblr v2 API accessing private blogs

Question

Have been searching high and low and cannot find any relevant answer on this. I was wondering if anyone has come across the Tumblr API v2 call that will let you access data from a private blog. I would like to post and retrieve listings from some of my private blogs while providing authentication of course. Thank you

Accepted Answer

Using correct OAuth calls to the API, with an access Token for a private blog, it is possible to access at least some of that private blog's information with the Tumblr API v2.

Here are some observations I have made:

api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/{base-hostname}/posts

Normally you make this call with your Public API Key, and that allows you to access the posts of any Tumblr that is not private.

However! Good news: If you include the full OAuth headers when making this request, it will return the list of posts of a Private Tumblr account. You need an access Token for that Tumblr, of course, to do this. Yes, I have tried this, done this, and it works.

If you only use your consumer API key, e.g.

```
api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/{base-hostname}/posts?api_key=w8878374r384r...
```

Then you will get nothing. You have to make a fully-authenticated request with all of the proper OAuth parameters.

api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/{base-hostname}/info

Will not work at all for a private blog, even when using all the proper OAuth stuff to make the API call.

api.tumblr.com/v2/user/info

Normally this returns a list of "blogs" for the given authenticated user. However, any private tumblrs will not show up in this list of blogs.

Note:

I have not tested many of the other API calls with private blogs, so I cannot tell you for sure if creating/editing/removing posts works or not.

I have not tested this at all with xAuth, only regular OAuth and a standard access Token obtained through the "web authorization flow"

Tumblr v2 API accessing private blogs

Solution

Problem