ChannelEngine: get API access

About this article

This article describes how to create an API key within the ChannelEngine web application and use it for authentication.

Table of contents

Create an API key

Use an API key for authentication

Create an API key

To create an API key in your ChannelEngine account:

1. Go to Settings, Merchant API keys.
2. Click Add and enter a name to describe the key.
3. Click Add again.

The newly created API key can be tested via the OpenAPI/Swagger reference (e.g.: https://YourAccount.channelengine.net/api/swagger/index.html) or with an API tool like Postman. You can also test it via one of the pre-built API clients, or using your own implementation.

NB: make sure that you are using the correct URL when connecting to ChannelEngine, and not demo.channelengine.net. Using the demo account results in the error { "StatusCode": 401, "LogId": null, "Success": false, "Message": "API key is unknown: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx", "ValidationErrors": {} }.

Use an API key for authentication

Although it is possible to authenticate an API using a key directly in the URL, certain webservers log URLs – making this an unsafe practice.

ChannelEngine recommends you do the authentication by inserting the API key in a request header. E.g.: 

GET /something HTTP/1.1
X-CE-KEY: 0001112223334445556667778889991010101111