QuickBooks Online OAuth2: keep the refresh token, use the playground for the rest

TL;DR

Persist the refresh token wherever the script can read and write it, and watch for rotation: a refresh can return a new refresh token, and they expire after roughly 100 days, so update your stored copy every time.

Steps

1. When QuickBooks OAuth2 feels too heavy for a script, split it in two. Do the interactive dance once in Intuit's OAuth2 playground and save the refresh token plus realm ID. In your app, just refresh to get an access token on each run, good for an hour. Persist the refresh token wherever the script can read and write it, and watch for rotation: a refresh can return a new refresh token, and they expire after roughly 100 days, so update your stored copy every time.

When to use

You are seeing this: When QuickBooks OAuth2 feels too heavy for a script, split it in two. Use this skill when you run into "QuickBooks Online OAuth2: keep the refresh token, use the playground for the rest".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Source: Stack Overflow #54381095 (accepted answer, 14 votes): the asker needed API access from a simple console app and found the OAuth2 flow daunting, redirect URI, realm ID, authorization code and all. The accepted answer: you only need to persist the refresh token. Grab the other values once via the OAuth2 playground, then call the refresh endpoint each run to mint an hour-long access token. Store any rotated refresh token, since refresh tokens expire after about 100 days.

Verified resolution: When QuickBooks OAuth2 feels too heavy for a script, split it in two. Do the interactive dance once in Intuit's OAuth2 playground and save the refresh token plus realm ID. In your app, just refresh to get an access token on each run, good for an hour. Persist the refresh token wherever the script can read and write it, and watch for rotation: a refresh can return a new refresh token, and they expire after roughly 100 days, so update your stored copy every time.

Source URL: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54381095/is-there-a-simple-way-to-access-the-quickbooks-api-using-oauth2