Obtain and manage a NextGen CSO authentication token for the PACER Case Locator (PCL) API, including reuse and invalidation, rather than re-authenticating on every search
domain: pacer.uscourts.gov · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Register for (or use an existing) PACER account; note that the PCL API has a separate QA environment for testing distinct from production
Call the PACER Authentication API login endpoint with your PACER username and password, including a time-based one-time passcode if multi-factor authentication is enabled on the account
Read the returned authentication token from the response and store it for reuse
Include the token in the X-NEXT-GEN-CSO header of every subsequent PACER Case Locator API search request
Reuse the same token across multiple searches until it expires instead of calling the authentication service before every request
When finished, call the authentication service again passing the token you want to invalidate to explicitly end the session
Known gotchas
Calling the authentication endpoint before every single search is unnecessary and wasteful — the token stays valid for a period of time and should be reused
If multi-factor authentication is enabled on the PACER account, automated login requires generating a TOTP code alongside the username/password, not just a static credential pair
Credentials and tokens issued in the PACER QA test environment are not portable to production, and vice versa
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