ServiceNow REST API: Table API Complete Reference for Developers

Base URL

https://[instance].service-now.com/api/now/table/[table_name]

Authentication

Three options in order of preference:

OAuth 2.0 — Bearer token in Authorization header (recommended for production)
Basic Auth — Base64 encoded username:password in Authorization header
API Key — if configured in your instance

Authorization: Bearer [access_token]
Authorization: Basic [base64(user:password)]

GET — retrieve records

GET /api/now/table/incident?sysparm_query=active=true^state=1
  &sysparm_limit=10
  &sysparm_offset=0
  &sysparm_fields=number,short_description,state,assigned_to
  &sysparm_display_value=true

Key parameters:

sysparm_query — encoded query string (same syntax as GlideRecord)
sysparm_limit — max records to return (default 10, max 10000)
sysparm_offset — for pagination, skip first N records
sysparm_fields — comma-separated list of fields to return
sysparm_display_value — true to return display values, false for raw values, all for both

GET — retrieve single record by sys_id

GET /api/now/table/incident/[sys_id]

POST — create a record

POST /api/now/table/incident
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "short_description": "Printer not working",
  "urgency": "2",
  "category": "hardware",
  "caller_id": "6816f79cc0a8016401c5a33be04be441"
}

Response: 201 Created with the new record in the body.

PATCH — update a record

PATCH /api/now/table/incident/[sys_id]
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "state": "6",
  "resolution_notes": "Printer driver reinstalled"
}

DELETE — delete a record

DELETE /api/now/table/incident/[sys_id]

Response: 204 No Content. Use carefully — this is a hard delete.

Pagination

// Page 1: offset=0, limit=100
// Page 2: offset=100, limit=100
// Page 3: offset=200, limit=100

Check the X-Total-Count response header to get the total number of matching records.

Common errors

401 — Authentication failed, check token/credentials
403 — Authenticated but no ACL access to the table or record
404 — Record not found (check sys_id, check table name)
429 — Rate limited, implement exponential backoff