Introduction

From Videntity Wiki - The API Documentation

Intended Audience

This document is intended for systems architects, and software developers or anyone wanting to use Videntity for a business or organization. This serves as the authoritative guide to the Videntity API. The authors assume that the reader has some computer programing experience and perhaps some exposure to the HTTP protocol.

Background

The Videntity API describes how to communicate with Videntity services at the lowest level and it also provides the detail necessary to implement your own Videntity clients from scratch. We will soon be providing language specific wrappers and free sample code to make things even easier.

You can use the Videntity API to build your own clients or APIs. We are currently building an online resource that will allow developers to share Videntity code.

The Videntity API is is built on top of the HTTP methods GET and POST and could be described as a REST-like web service (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer). All Videntity requests are made via an HTTP GET or POST (we do not currently support PUT or DELETE). Videntity is designed so that all incoming POST requests to a specified URL will be taken as an API call (responding with XML) and all incoming GET requests to a specified URL will be taken as an actual website request (responding with HTML).

A Few Notes on the Videntity Service

For individuals, you can create a free acount.

If you're a business or organisation, you'll need a business account. Before you begin, you must first register with Videntity for and setup an API key. This will let you and your applications communicate with Videntity. Navigate to https://api.videntity.com/ to register.

Videntity services require a login to occur and session to be created before interacting with the Videntity Web Server. Establishing a connection and a session is also part of the API. All communication with Videntity services are conducted over SSL/HTTPS using 2048KB encryption.

Introduction

Videntity is easy to integrate into a new or existing infrastructure. Your application communicates with Videntity by sending information via HTTP request method POST. You can use any number of libraries specific to your environment. For example:

wwwLib for C: http://www.w3.org/Library/

httplib for Python: http://docs.python.org/library/httplib.html

HTTPClient for PHP: http://scripts.incutio.com/httpclient/

System.Net for Microsoft .NET: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303436

You also can theoretically use a web browser or a command line utility such as Curl. Just construct the request and send it to the server at the correct URL for the type of request you are making. A response is returned for each POST request made to any specific URL. Currently, XML is the only format officially supported but if you would like support for other formats, then send us a request.

Each API method has its URL and its own specific inputs. After Videntity receives a request, it returns a response in XML. The response includes status information (SUCCESS, PENDING, or FAILURE) and other formatted response data. Here are some example methods.

https://api.videntity.com/api/session/login
https://api.videntity.com/api/session/logout
https://api.videntity.com/api/session/ping
https://api.videntity.com/api/user/create
https://api.videntity.com/api/user/retrieve
https://api.videntity.com/api/user/update
https://api.videntity.com/api/user/delete
https://api.videntity.com/api/association/create
https://api.videntity.com/api/association/retrieve
https://api.videntity.com/api/association/update
https://api.videntity.com/api/association/delete
https://api.videntity.com/api/site_key/login

"api" points us to the latest version of the API. You can replace this with an explicit version such as "api0001".