Authentication

Fly API keys are bearer tokens that identify your dashboard account. Every API request must include one in the Authorization header:

Authorization: Bearer <your-api-key>

A Fly API key is a JWT signed by the Fly dashboard. It encodes your account email and the human-readable name you gave the key when you created it. You do not need to inspect or decode the token — just send it as a bearer token.

A key grants read access to only the surveys and responses that belong to your account. It cannot access other users’ data.

API keys are created from the Fly dashboard.

1. Sign in at https://fly.vlab.digital.
2. Open Connect → API Keys.
3. Click Create and give the key a name (for example nightly-export).
4. Copy the token that appears.

The token is shown only once. Store it somewhere safe — a secrets manager, environment variable, or .env file that is not committed to version control. Anyone with the token can download your survey data.

Key names must be unique per account. If you reuse a name, the dashboard will refuse with “there is already an API Key with that name”.

Send the token as a bearer token on every request. For example, to list your surveys:

curl https://fly-dashboard-api.vlab.digital/api/v1/surveys \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FLY_API_KEY"

In Python:

import os
import requests

BASE = "https://fly-dashboard-api.vlab.digital/api/v1"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['FLY_API_KEY']}"}

r = requests.get(f"{BASE}/surveys", headers=headers)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json())

If you receive 401, check that the Authorization header is present, starts with Bearer , and contains the full token copied from the dashboard.

• Store the key in an environment variable (FLY_API_KEY) rather than hard-coding it into scripts.
• Do not commit the key to git or share it in chat.
• Use a distinct, named key per integration (for example vlab-connector, analytics-notebook) so you can tell them apart.