# 🔌 Integration - Getting started

{% hint style="warning" %}
This OAuth-based API will be replaced by NWC, an open API for seamless wallet-to-app connections.

Try it with zero setup time in the Alby Sandbox: <https://sandbox.albylabs.com/>.
{% endhint %}

Welcome to the Alby Wallet API Integration Guide, your resource for integrating Bitcoin Lightning into your applications. \
\
This allows you to easily add bitcoin lightning with Alby API to your application. You can send and receive payments, get podcasting 2.0 details, create invoices, retrieve the user's incoming and outgoing payments, and make Lightning payments on behalf of users.

To test out the API using the Postman web client, check out our Postman workspace: <https://www.postman.com/getalby/workspace/alby-workspace/>. To use this workspace in the browser, please fork it and use an access token from <https://getalby.com/developer> to test it out. If you have any issues, please let us know on [telegram](https://t.me/getAlby).

### Alby API Endpoint

All of the examples in this guide will use the production endpoint. Please be aware that you will be spending real sats when paying any invoice generated by this API.

```
https://api.getalby.com
```

## Quickstart

1. See the [Authorization page](https://guides.getalby.com/developer-guide/developer-guide/alby-wallet-api/reference/authorization) on how to obtain an access token
2. Make a request using the access token in the `Authorization` header:

```bash
curl https://api.getalby.com/balance -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN"
```

You should now see a JSON response like that:

```json
{
  "balance": 1000,
  "currency": "BTC",
  "unit": "sat"
}
```

3. Make sure to always send payloads as JSON and include a content-type header (`Content-Type: application/json`)

## Alby Packages

* [Alby JS SDK](https://github.com/getAlby/js-sdk) - Typescript package to integrate Alby Wallet API and [NWC](https://nwc.dev/)
* [Alby PHP](https://github.com/getAlby/alby-php) -  PHP library to integrate the Alby Wallet API

### Community Packages

* [pyalby](https://pypi.org/project/pyalby/) - Python library to integrate the Alby Wallet API
* [AlbyKit](https://github.com/SparrowTek/AlbyKit) - Swift SDK to integrate the Alby Wallet API
* [Delphi/Lazarus](https://bitbucket.org/idealtecd/ideal-library/src/master/Api/Bitcoin/) - Delphi/Lazarus library to integrate the Alby Wallet API

{% hint style="info" %}
Check out the [Alby developer portal](https://getalby.com/developer) for a full overview of Alby's supported tools, APIs and packages to add lightning to your app.
{% endhint %}