Authentication and Error Messages

Introduction to the Erbium API

The Erbium API allows you to interact with the Erbium platform from your own applications. The API follows a RESTful style, with resource-based URLs and standard HTTP status codes. Data is encoded using the JSON format.

Authentication

API calls are authenticated using a simple bearer token scheme using API keys that you create and manage via the Erbium user interface. Each API key is specific to a particular event.

Creating an API key

To create an API key, log into the Erbium platform and navigate to the desired event.

Follow these steps:

1. From the Setup menu select API Keys to navigate to the API Keys page.
   
   
2. Click the 'Create API Key' button to create a new API key.
   
3. The new API key is displayed in a popup dialog.  Copy the API key created by the Erbium platform. This is your only chance to copy the key. Once you dismiss the dialog the key is hashed and is no longer available from Erbium. Don’t worry if you lose the key, though. You can always delete it and create another one.
   
   

Once you have an active API key you can use it to invoke any of the Erbium API endpoints for that event. Pass the key in the [Authorization] header as follows (using the actual key, of course. The x’s below are just a placeholder.)

Authorization: Bearer ERB-API-KEY-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It is crucial that you keep your API key secret on your system! Anyone with access to the key can gain access to the personal information of all your registrants. If you suspect your key has been compromised, immediately log into the Erbium platform and disable that key. You can generate a new key for subsequent operations.

Errors

Each Erbium API endpoint returns an HTTP status code that indicates the success or failure of the call.