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Developer API » Introduction
Introduction

We encourage the developer community to use our APIs to create new and exciting plugins and applications. In order to use the flippid APIs, you will need a flippid account and an API-Key. You can generate an API-Key from the my flippid section of your account. If you are developing an application, you will also need a Developer profile.

Integration

In an effort to make it as easy as possible to integrate with flippid, our API is implement through a REST interface at this endpoint:

https://www.flippid.com/api/endpoint

Sandbox (testing) access to the API is available at:

http://sandbox.flippid.com/api/endpoint

Requests to the API can be made through either the GET or POST method, although you may find it advantageous to use the POST method for some of the larger methods. A sample call to the Buyoff.ValidateItem method might take this form (using the GET method for demonstration purposes):

https://www.flippid.com/api/endpoint?method=Buyoff.ValidateItem&devkey=123456&version=1.0.0&itemname=Nextel%20i860%20Cell%20Phone&tags=nextel%20i860%20cell%20phone%20cellphone&maxprice=40&duration=30&imageURL=http://www.example.com/i860.jpg&info=Looking%20for%20this%20to%20be%20in%20good%20condition

You can see that all of the parameters above are URL-Encoded.

We use HTTP-Authentication to identify your account, so you will also need to pass your flippid user ID as the username and your flippid API-Key as your password with each request. API-Keys can be generated through my flippid. You will never need your flippid password for communication to the flippid APIs.

A sample response for this call might look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<response version="1.0.0">

<method>Buyoff.ValidateItem</method>

<Success>True</Success>

<methodResponse>

</methodResponse>

</response>


A sample error response might look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<response version="1.0.0">

<method>Buyoff.ValidateItem</method>

<Success>False</Success>

<Errors>

<Error>

<Code>1</Code>

<Message>Item name is too long.</Message>

</Error>

</Errors>

</response>



Commonalities among API methods

Every call to the flippid APIs should include:

  1. The required HTTP-Authentication values
  2. A valid DevKey
  3. The method name you are calling
  4. The version of the API you are calling
Every response from the flippid APIs will include
  1. The version of the API that was called (as an attribute to the response node)
  2. The method that was called in the method node
  3. A "Success" node that will return True for successful calls and False for failed calls.
Successful calls

All successful calls to a method will return a methodResponse node, containing optional response information from the call.

Failed calls:

All failure responses will return an Errors node that can contain multiple Error nodes. Each Error node will contain a Code and Message element describing the cause of the error.




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