We’ve been working on integrating the Grants.gov API using the API key credentials provided. However, we’re encountering a 403: Missing Authentication Token error when making requests.
We’ve followed the guidance from earlier Discourse posts — switching from the dev API domain to the production endpoint, using the ‘X-Auth’ header, and changing from GET to POST with a JSON body.
Despite this, we’re now receiving DNS resolution errors:
Failed to resolve api.simpler.grants.gov: [Errno 8] nodename nor servname provided, or not known
This suggests that the api.simpler.grants.gov domain may not be publicly available. Could you confirm whether access requires VPN or an internal network? Or is there another public base URL we should use?
Thank you for your help and for supporting the integration.
Hi @kodejai,
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble with the API. There is no VPN needed and that is the correct external DNS name. We’re not seeing any issue on the API side, and I’m able to access, so it seems like it might be something more local or in the network between you and our API. Hopefully it’s just some temporary issue in-between you and the API and it will resolve itself soon.
Can you reach https://simpler.grants.gov and https://api.simpler.grants.gov/docs from the machine you’re getting the resolution error on? Our website and the API use the same DNS, hosting infrastructure, etc. so it would be interesting to know if they’re both suffering from the same issue. If you can’t reach those, can you reach https://grants.gov either?