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# Chapter 1 - Creating Access to Back Office
You first need to create an access to the web service.
Go in the PrestaShop back-office, open the "Web service" page under the "Advanced Parameters", and then choose "Yes" for the "Enable PrestaShop Webservice".
In previous versions of PrestaShop, you had to create a `.htaccess` file (or edit the existing one) in order to make your web service work.
This is no longer the case in PrestaShop 1.5: the `.htaccess` will automatically be generated, while keeping your custom rules.
## Creating access
Open the "Web service" page under the "Advanced Parameters", and then click the "Add New" button to access the account configuration section. A long form appears:
* **Key**. Click the "Generate" button to generate an authentication key. You can also create your own (which must be 32 characters long), but using a generated key prevents wrong-doers from guessing your key.\
Using this key, you and other selected users will be able to access the web service.
* **Key description**. The description is not public, but make sure to put all the keywords pertaining to the use, so that you can find they key more quickly.
* **Status**. You can disable any key at any time.
* **Permissions**. This section is very important, as it enables you to assign rights for each resource you want to make available for this key. Indeed, you might want a user to have read and write access on some resources, but only read access on others – and no access to the more important ones.\
In the list of permissions, the left button allows you to define all the rights for a given resource. Select the resources you need to manipulate from your application; in our case check the first check box in the "customers" row and then press "Save".
* **Shop association**. This only appears in multistore mode.
If you define your own passkey, make sure it is very secure and that its rights are limited.
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