Rest API and how it can help you manage your website

For those who are immersed in the world of IT, the acronym API (application programming interface) is more than familiar. In this article, we won’t show anything new to those who’ve been working for a while with web services. But those who are starting, or want to start, or are part of the Transparent Edge family, might be in for something new.

WHAT IS AN API?

In a very simplified way, we can say that an API is a way of accessing the services that a platform offers. Through pre-established calls that may require certain parameters, an API will quickly and easily give back the requested information to the user, abstracting from the logic and programming that said data may require in order to obtain the information through a more traditional way. 

WHAT IS A REST API?

There are different kinds of API, classified through diverse criteria, but at Transparent Edge we’ve chosen a REST API (representational state transfer). It is one of the most widely used styles of architectural software. This implies that many users already have knowledge about this kind of API. 

Through any Internet browser, tools like URLs, or programs like Postman, among others, you can make a request to our API to obtain information regarding the performance of your website with Transparent Edge.  You can visit api.transparentcdn.com/docs with your username and password, have a look at the documentation regarding our API and discover all the options that it offers. You will find the range of IPs we work with, you can perform invalidations, check activity logs, add new sites, create video transcoding profiles, etc. 

Of course, each request has a description of what it does, the parameters that it requires and also the possibility of making requests directly from the documentation. And logically, for security reasons, no one other than you can access your account data through the API. 

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR API FROM THE TRANSPARENT EDGE CONTROL PANEL? 

If you’ve been managing APIs for a short time, don’t worry. At Transparent Edge, we’ve thought about that, and we offer a control panel as your first option to access all the data and interact with the CDN. It’s available at dashboard.transparentcdn.com and also you have a graphic visualization of this data. But, if you want to harness the full power from Transparent Edge and even integrate this with your own systems or services, the API is your friend. 

If you have any doubts about how to use it or a suggestion for improvements, don’t hesitate to contact us. All ideas are welcome.