March 26, 2019
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Data API

How Dailymotion’s API Explorer can help you bootstrap your next project

From gathering information about our APIs as a Project Manager to building the perfect API request as a Software Engineer, Dailymotion’s API Explorer is proved to be an efficient sidekick throughout your project development journey.

The API Explorer is one of the most important parts of our API ecosystem. Alongside consulting our API Reference Documentation, you can interactively discover and try out our API platform right from within a web browser:

The first step to our API

If you want to quickly get the gist of what Dailymotion has to offer without opening the whole API reference, the API Explorer will let you understand what kind of information could be retrieved from our catalog.

API endpoint discovery

Endpoint discovery per object type

Each section in the API Explorer will regroup every possible action (GET, POST, or DELETE requests) which can be made against a specific resource type (User, Video,…) but also what kind of connections (i.e. relations between REST resources) are available for you to use in your project.

Note: This highlights the Graph-oriented architecture of our API and how the objects are related to one another.

HTTP verbs & parameter values

Colors help to quickly locate endpoints & HTTP verbs to use
depending on the nature of the action.

The API Explorer was build with efficiency in mind. We want you to be able to easily spot and jump into the endpoint section which will fit your needs.
For example, different colors will be used to differentiate reading / creating / editing or deleting actions. Let’s say that you want to add a video inside a Dailymotion playlist. You’ll start by going into the playlist object section and then in the “Connection playlist / video” subsection.
You know that the action you’re looking for is an editing action. So looking for the green (POST) endpoint will lead you to the correct endpoints.

Autocompletion and selectors are present on every variable fields to show you what possible values could be used in each fields or filters.

Your ally during the construction of your integration

Thanks to our API Explorer, you can build the perfect API request which fits your needs and play it against production data, without writing any line of code. You can even test the API request using your own API key to get close to the real condition you’ll encounter in your final product.

How to use the API Explorer?

You can log in right inside the API Explorer in order to be able to select your own API key and dailymotion account to performed authenticated API calls, or simply use this feature to forge access tokens without any knowledge of OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol, with a click of a button. The tool let you set the value of global parameters to attach to each API they will test inside the API Explorer (such as changing the global localization to consider in order to have translated and contextual results or turning on or off the parental control). This way you can compare the API response obtained with the API Explorer with those from your real apps to ease debugging of communication issues with the API.

Note: Sometimes, having a glance at the API Explorer won’t be enough if you’re looking for additional and detailed information about a specific field or filter. In this case, you’ll find links next to every parameter to guide you directly to the relevant API Reference documentation section.

A powerful tool inside a wider toolbox

Depending on the level of information you’re looking for, your current position in your integration project development journey and your current knowledge of dailymotion’s API, you can use the tool that will resonate best with your needs.