Overview

API reference

Our API uses resource-oriented URLs, accepts form-encoded request bodies, returns XML responses, and authentication.

Our API provides an easy way for you to integrate with the iPaper Flipbook product from your backend.

You can use the API to access the most common actions also available from our CMS, which allows you to build your own software that leverages the iPaper product.

General Guidelines

  • If an API returns a humanly read message, do not rely on it. It may change over time without notification. The message is only intended to help you understand the return code.

  • Anything but a SUCCESS return code should be treated as an error. An ERROR return code may be changed with a more specific return code at a later stage, but a SUCCESS code will never be changed without previous notification.

  • Any breaking changes will either be notified in due time, or a new API version will be setup so the old one can run concurrently.

  • API methods may be appended without there being created a new overall API version, but only as long as they add non-breaking features like optional fields and extra return data. As a result of this, do use XPATH to query results, you should not rely on element index positions.

Best practice

  • Keep your credentials safe While our endpoint allows for you to use GET requests, we strongly suggest you use POST. Using GET requests will send any credentials as clear text over the internet even if sent via HTTPS.

  • Rate limit your requests You should keep requests to our API below 50 per minute. Some requests like for instance Paper.GetAllPapers will return the same result every time unless someone/something has made changes since the last request, so consider adding a short lived cache on your end, or only make calls when you know there there are changes.

  • Use caching where possible Depending on the endpoint you call in the API, you should cache responses when possible. Caching results that aren’t prone to changes will make your software faster since you save a roundtrip to our API for data you already have.

  • Use the proper abstractions If you have a website or app that uses data from iPaper, you should create an endpoint in your backend that your services talk to. Having your own endpoint allows you to manage caching, hide credentials, transform API results and much more. Don’t call our API directly from any code that runs on user devices, e.g. apps, websites, etc. as this introduces the risk of end-users grabbing the credentials and misusing them.

  • Dedicated user We highly recommend creating a user dedicated to API usage. This helps safeguard your company from unfortunate situations, such as API functionality stop working due to having deleted a retired employees personal credentials.

Accessing our flipbook backend API

When accessing our flipbook backend API there are two fields that are always present:

  • Username The username field is the email you use to access our administration system. This is a required field for all our API endpoints.

  • Password The password field is the password tied to the username of your choice, that is used to access our administration system. This is a required field for all our API endpoints.

Another way to grant access through our flipbook backend API would be using ‘APIKey’ (not case sensitive) as your username and your actual API key as your password.

API Keys can be created via account settings. Please note that only Administrators can create/see API Keys.

Why 2 different ways to access?

When accessing the API we allow 2 different methods of authentication. Through a users username and password or 'APIKey' and the actual API Key. We have multiple authentication methods for the following reasons:

Two-factor authentication users When accessing our API, be aware that normal user credentials are prohibited from accessing the Backend API when two-factor authentication is enabled on the user. Using API Key credentials can circumvent this and allow your license to have 2FA and use our backend API at the same time. If Forced2FA has been enabled on the account, the API Key approach is the only way to access the Backend API. There might be other restrictions going forward that will affect normal usage of our API, whereas the 'APIKey' method allows us to grant access without having to verify any other form of verification other than the API Key itself.

API Endoint URL

The actual endpoint URL depends on which partner the solution is hosted at. For direct customers of iPaper, the endpoint is:

https://ipaper.api.ipapercms.dk

For other partners, the endpoint is:

https://<partner>.api.ipapercms.dk

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