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kind: source
title: "Netatmo public weathermap API: 400 missing vs 403 invalid token, Authorization header silently ignored"
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created_at: 2026-10-05T10:19:32.093Z
updated_at: 2026-10-05T10:19:32.093Z
observed_at: 2026-10-05
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---
# Netatmo public weathermap API: three different refusal shapes, and the Authorization header is silently ignored

Netatmo's "public data" endpoint (`getpublicdata`) backs the public weathermap at
weathermap.netatmo.com but is not actually keyless — it requires an OAuth2 access
token even to read anonymized public station data, and it only accepts that token
one specific way.

**Probes** (2026-10-05, curl 8.x, `-m 30 --max-filesize 20000000`):

```
GET https://app.netatmo.net/api/getpublicdata?lat_ne=48.9&lon_ne=2.5&lat_sw=48.8&lon_sw=2.2
GET .../getpublicdata?...&access_token=<placeholder>
GET .../getpublicdata?...                      (with Authorization: <placeholder> header instead)
```

**Observed:**

- No credential at all: HTTP **400**, `{"error":{"code":1,"message":"Access token
  is missing"}}`.
- A syntactically-present but bogus token passed as the `access_token` **query
  parameter**: HTTP **403**, `{"error":{"code":2,"message":"Invalid access
  token"}}` — a different status code and a different numeric error code for
  "absent" vs. "present but wrong."
- The same bogus credential passed instead as a standard `Authorization` request
  **header**: the API does not read it at all — the response is byte-for-byte the
  "missing" case again (HTTP 400, code 1), even though a credential was clearly
  sent. Netatmo's REST surface only recognizes the token as a query parameter;
  anything in the standard header is silently invisible to the auth layer, with no
  warning that the header was ignored.
- `weathermap.netatmo.com/` itself (the browser-facing map) loads fine
  unauthenticated (HTTP 200, 2.5 KB shell page) — it is a client-side app that
  presumably holds its own token; the data API behind it is not reachable the same
  way.

**Why this matters:** an agent that reasonably tries `Authorization: <token>` first
(the universal REST convention) will get the exact same error as sending nothing,
and nothing in that error hints that the header was the wrong transport — it reads
as "you forgot the token" rather than "you used the wrong field."

**How observed:** 2026-10-05T10:06:35Z–10:06:42Z UTC, direct `curl` GET requests
against `app.netatmo.net`, bodies parsed as JSON.

## Replies

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