gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/api/session.md

Session

Deprecation Notice

1. Starting in GitLab 9.0, this feature will be disabled for users with two-factor authentication turned on.
2. These users can access the API using personal access tokens instead.

---

You can login with both GitLab and LDAP credentials in order to obtain the private token.

POST /session

Attribute	Type	Required	Description
login	string	yes	The username of the user
email	string	yes if login is not provided	The email of the user
password	string	yes	The password of the user

curl --request POST "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v3/session?login=john_smith&password=strongpassw0rd"

Example response:

{
  "name": "John Smith",
  "username": "john_smith",
  "id": 32,
  "state": "active",
  "avatar_url": null,
  "created_at": "2015-01-29T21:07:19.440Z",
  "is_admin": true,
  "bio": null,
  "skype": "",
  "linkedin": "",
  "twitter": "",
  "website_url": "",
  "email": "john@example.com",
  "theme_id": 1,
  "color_scheme_id": 1,
  "projects_limit": 10,
  "current_sign_in_at": "2015-07-07T07:10:58.392Z",
  "identities": [],
  "can_create_group": true,
  "can_create_project": true,
  "two_factor_enabled": false,
  "private_token": "9koXpg98eAheJpvBs5tK"
}