Get permission denied in REST API call

The ability to access community-level settings is typically restricted to Administrators. Specifically, I believe the user must have the "Update Communities" permission granted in order to read or modify community-level settings. 

Typically the only settings that a regular user will be able to access are their own user settings. For example:

/restapi/vc/users/self/settings

It's strange that you're getting a permission denied error, though. I would have expected the response to just contain an empty settings node, for example:

<response status="success">
    <settings type="settings" href="/settings"/>
</response>

Are you able to make any other REST API requests successfully as that user?

Hi Adam, 

I found out that it is permission setting problem. I turn the rest call into restadmin. 

Thanks