PRO: Data-Access

Requesting data with a http-request from an URL is the basic 1st step the JCI Plugins do. The JCI PRO Plugin is very flexible in doing this.

Setup a http-request means:

Method:
There are
How is the request done? Check the API what method GET / POST / PUT is expected. Then usually the CURL-variant is working. If not you may try the other methods.
- GET:
  - CURL-GET
  - WP-GET
  - PHP-RAWGET
- POST
  - CURL-POST
  - WP-POST
  - PHP-RAWPOST
- PUT
  - CURL-PUT

Header:
PHP-RAW and WP send fixed headers. CURL is very flexible here.
Payload:
Additional Info when using POST
Timeout:
Who many seconds for loading url till timeout?
Cachetime:
Set the cachetime for this URL to n seconds, regardless of the settings in the plugin-option, even when caching is switched off there.

Authentication: API-Keys, oAuth2 etc.

Many APIs require additional info about the asking user. Usual ways are (see the manual of the API you want to ask what it is expecting):

API-Key as GET-Parameter:
Add to the API-URL something like ...&apikey=CODE_YOU_GOT_WHEN_REGISTERING_TO_THE_API
Sending the API-Key in the request-header, see the API-manual:
Usa a JCI-Template and add at CURLOPTIONS something like
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER=apikey:CODE_YOU_GOT_WHEN_REGISTERING_TO_THE_API
or
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS=whatever=whatever_credentials&id=CODE_YOU_GOT_WHEN_REGISTERING_TO_THE_API
oAuth2:
A very common way is sending authentication-data (somehow a username and password) to the API and the APIs answers with a Token. This Token is valid for some time and has to be sent for the real API-request about data. See here how this is done:
Get Token – Get Data with the Token
There are many more ways API checking the Authentication

Depending on the API the result of the request is some data, usally text-data formatted as JSON, XML, CSV…

With the Shortcode-Options
inputtype=xml or =csv

you can convert XML / CSV into JSON.

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