Overview
When working with CircleCI workflows that include approval jobs, you may need to identify who approved a specific job for auditing, troubleshooting, or reporting purposes. This article explains how to use the CircleCI API v2 to retrieve approval information.
What You'll Need
A CircleCI API token with appropriate permissions
The job ID or project information for the approval job you want to investigate
Using the Get Job Details Endpoint
The CircleCI API v2 provides a getJobDetails endpoint that returns detailed information about jobs, including approval data for approval-type jobs.
API Endpoint
GET https://circleci.com/api/v2/project/{project-slug}/job/{job-number}'After making the call, your response will look something like this:
{
"job_number": 20,
"stopped_at": "2025-07-14T19:23:26Z",
"started_at": "2025-07-14T19:22:18Z",
"name": "build",
"project_slug": "gh/org/project",
"approved_by": "user-id",
"type": "approval",
"approval_request_id": "request-id",
"status": "success",
"id": "job-id"
}This provides you with the value for the UID who the job was "canceled_by". Take that User ID and pass it to the Get User API endpoint. You should receive a response that looks like this:
{
"name": "Martin",
"login": "martincircleci",
"id": <user_id>
}