How to join a Zoom meeting using the Zoom Meeting SDK

Question

People commonly ask on the Zoom Developer Forum:

Answer

Joining a Zoom meeting with the Zoom Meeting SDK is straightforward once your SDK is initialized and authenticated correctly. Whether you are building a bot, embedding Zoom into your app, or creating a custom meeting experience, the flow follows a clear sequence.

Here is what you need to know.

Initialize and Authenticate the SDK

Before joining any meeting, you must initialize the Meeting SDK in your application and complete SDK authentication. This step ensures your app is authorized to interact with Zoom’s meeting infrastructure.

If you are hosting a meeting as a non-logged-in or API user, you must retrieve two values from the Zoom REST API:

• User ID: This can be your email address or retrieved by sending a GET request to https://api.zoom.us/v2/users

• Zoom Access Key (ZAK): Retrieve this by sending a GET request to /users/me/zak or /users/{userId}/token

Important: Even though the ZAK token is short-lived, do not expose or share the ZAK token after retrieving it.

To learn how to generate a ZAK token or what a ZAK token is, check out our blog on Zoom ZAK tokens.

Join a Meeting

To join a meeting as any user, you only need the meeting number and, if required, the meeting password.

Once your SDK instance is ready, call joinMeeting on the Meeting SDK instance:

const zoom = useZoom();

await zoom.joinMeeting({
  userName: displayName,
  meetingNumber: meetingNumber,
  password: meetingPassword,
});

That is it. After this call succeeds, the SDK connects your application to the specified meeting.

Start a Meeting (Optional)

If instead you are starting a meeting as a host using a ZAK token, call startMeeting:

const zoom = useZoom();

await zoom.startMeeting({
  userName: DisplayName,
  meetingNumber: MeetingNumber,
  zoomAccessToken: ZakToken,
});

The ZAK token is required when starting a meeting as a non-logged-in or API user.

Meeting Number vs Vanity ID

You can start a meeting using either a meeting number or a vanity ID, depending on your configuration. For joining, the meeting number is typically used along with the meeting password if the meeting requires one.

Summary

To join a Zoom meeting using the Zoom Meeting SDK:

1. Initialize and authenticate the SDK

2. Ensure you have the meeting number (and password if required)

3. Call joinMeeting with the appropriate parameters

4. If you are hosting as a non-logged-in or API user, retrieve and securely handle the ZAK token before calling startMeeting.

If you are also exploring more advanced scenarios, such as running multiple simultaneous meetings from your application, check out our related blog on joining multiple simultaneous meetings through the Zoom SDK.

Zoom Developer Forum Examples

Some examples of this question are:

• https://devforum.zoom.us/t/joining-a-zoom-meeting-using-sdk/80788