Common Behaviors

From API Documentation

Revision as of 15:09, 10 September 2010

Access Permissions

Accessing the API requires a username and password, provided by Rezora. Note that this is not the same as your username and password to the Rezora system itself. To obtain a username and password, contact your Rezora Account Manager.

There are two distinct levels of access to the API, which correspond to user types on the Rezora system in general:

• Company-level
• Agent-level

API credentials for a company-level account only grant access to company-level resources, and credentials for an agent-level account only grant access to agent-level resources.

Usage Limitations

Currently, there is no usage limit in place for the API. However, we do track usage, and reserve the right to institute limitations in the future. In the mean time, we ask that you develop your applications in such a way as to make the fewest API calls necessary to accomplish your goals, and to spread out the calls over time. Your consideration is appreciated.

URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)

The Rezora REST API uses the URI to identify the resource you are attempting to consume.

URI Template: PROTOCOL://DOMAIN/VERSION/RESOURCE_DESIGNATOR.RESPONSE_FORMAT

Example URI: http://api.rezora.com/v1/agents/1234.xml

The URI consists of the following components:

Protocol (required)

The API currently supports the basic HTTP protocol, but will likely switch to HTTPS in future versions to further ensure security.

Example URI: http://api.rezora.com/v1/agents/1234.xml

Domain (required)

The domain of the API is expected to be permanent, and will not change with future versions.

Example URI: http://api.rezora.com/v1/agents/1234.xml

Version (required)

The URI for the API includes a version indicator, used to specify the version of the API for which your application is programmed. This will allow us to continue to offer previous versions of the API without interruption as future versions are released.

Example URI: http://api.rezora.com/v1/agents/1234.xml

Resource Designator (required)

The resource designator portion of the URI is the part which uniquely identifies the resource you wish to consume. It may be comprised of multiple components separated by forward slashes (/). For example, to reference the resource containing all agents in your brokerage, your resource designator would be "agents". To reference the resource for a specific agent, you would include the agent's ID in the resource designator: "agents/1234". URIs for all available resources are given on the individual Resource Definition pages.

Example URI: http://api.rezora.com/v1/agents/1234.xml

Response Format (optional)

The response format indicator is an optional file extension added to the end of the resource designator. Supported values are JSON, XML, and CSV. A response format indicator included in the URI will supersede the value of an ACCEPT header (described below), if present. If no response format indicator is included in the URI, and no ACCEPT header is included with the request, the response format will default to CSV.

Example URI: http://api.rezora.com/v1/agents/1234.xml

HTTP Request Headers

The Rezora REST API makes use of several headers sent with the HTTP request for such purposes as authentication, indicating what action is to be taken with the resource specified in the URI, and indicating in what format the data will take in both the request and response.

Example Request: 
GET /v1/agents/1234.xml HTTP/1.1
Authorization: Digest username="YOUR_USERNAME", realm="Rezora API", nonce="4c487da82df10", 
 uri="/v1/agents/1234.xml", cnonce="MjMxATNz", nc=00000001, qop="auth", 
 response="a6767615fab72a0c9d64d4b01df69db2", opaque="e24302732637d79c3b77fa62483ec0b7"
Host: api.rezora.com
Accept: text/csv
Content-type: text/plain

The API makes use of the following headers:

Method (required)

The Rezora REST API makes use of the standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE) to determine the action you wish to perform with the resource you have specified in the URI. Note that not all resources will support all four methods. The actions associated with each method are as follows:

GET

A request sent using the HTTP GET method is used to retrieve or read the data for the specified resource.

POST

A request sent using the HTTP POST method is used to create a new resource of the type specified in the URI.

PUT

A request sent using the HTTP PUT method is used to update an existing resource, as specified in the URI.

DELETE

A request sent using the HTTP DELETE method is used to delete the resource indicated in the URI.

Authorization (required)

The Rezora REST API uses HTTP digest access authentication to validate your username and password before providing access to the requested resource.

Accept (required)

The HTTP ACCEPT header is used to specify the desired format of the response data from the API. The available options are application/xml, application/xml, and text/csv. This option is overridden by the presence of a response format indicator (file extension) in the URI.

Content-type (required)

The HTTP CONTENT-TYPE header is used to specify the format of data being sent as part of the request. The available options are application/xml, application/xml, and text/plain. Note that, while the Content-type header is required for all request methods, data is only sent with POST and PUT requests.

HTTP Response Headers

The Rezora REST API provides useful information in several headers sent with the HTTP response.

Example Response Headers:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:00:10 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.12 (Ubuntu)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.10-2ubuntu6.4
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=e3a81e530b701165d368b77c9ddc6ab6; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/csv; charset=UTF-8

Status

The first line of the HTTP headers includes a numeric code, which is used to indicate the status of your request.

Example Status Header:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK

A list of status codes used by the API and their meanings is provided below.

Status Codes

200

The request was successfully processed.

204

The request was formatted correctly, but no data was found for the specified resource.

400

Your data has failed a validation test.

401

Either your username or password are incorrect, or you are attempting to access a resource that is not available for your user type.

404

The resource you have requested does not exist.

405

The method you are attempting to use (GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE) is not allowed for the resource you have requested.

500

The API experienced an internal error while attempting to process your request.

501

The method you are attempting to use (GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE) has not yet been implemented, but may be in a future release.

Content-type

The HTTP CONTENT-TYPE header is used to indicate the format of data being sent as part of the response. The format is determined by either the ACCEPT HTTP request header or the response format indicator (file extension) in the request URI. If no ACCEPT header or response format indicator are present in the request, the default response format is text/csv.

Example Header:
Content-Type: text/csv; charset=UTF-8

About Output Data

All dates are displayed as UTC (GMT), unless otherwise noted. All output data is UTF-8 encoded. Data in JSON and XML formats follow the standard rules of escaping reserved characters, encoding entities, etc. as indicated by their respective standards. As there is no standard for the CSV format, here are the formatting rules we are using for our output:

• Field delimiter: |
• Line terminator: \r\n
• Quoting: all fields are quoted
• Quote character: "
• Escape Character: \