REST API Introduction

The REST API is available to all Enterprise and Professional customers.

The Mozenda REST API allows you to control your agents and data collections without manually accessing the Web Console. The API can be used to run an agent, get data, check a job’s progress, and more. You can use the API to automate Mozenda-related operations within your own application.

An API call is a URL that invokes specific actions and/or retrieves data. The parameters that are included in the API call determine the actions performed, or what data is retrieved.

The API calls return XML containing the status and details of the made API call (like starting a new job, for example).

Sample response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AgentRunResponse
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
	<Result>Success</Result>
	<AgentID>1003</AgentID>
	<JobID>15852</JobID>
	<JobType>WebPageHarvest</JobType>
</AgentRunResponse>

Understanding API calls

API calls can do many of the same things that can be done manually through the Web Console, such as running agents, canceling agents, or exporting agents’ data. Each major function of the Web Console has a corresponding API call.
For example, the Agent.Run API call runs a new job for an agent. If we were to use the Mozenda API to run a new job for an agent with an ID of 1009, the API call would look like the following:

https://api.mozenda.com/rest?WebServiceKey=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX&Service=Mozenda10&Operation=Agent.Run&AgentID=1009

Each piece of information included in the API call is a parameter. Each parameter has a name and a value.

https://api.mozenda.com/rest?WebServiceKey=XXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX&Service=Mozenda10&Operation=Agent.Run&AgentID=1009

The first portion of the API call is the URL that seeks the Mozenda servers and identifies itself as an API call:

https://api.mozenda.com/rest?

The next portion of the API call is the web service key, which specifies to the Mozenda servers which account the API is accessing and acts as a password to that account:

&WebServiceKey=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX

• Click here to find your web service key.

After the web service key is the parameter identifying the type of API call being made, which is standard to all Mozenda API calls:

&Service=Mozenda10

After the service parameter, the operation parameter is used to specify which API call is being made (i.e., which Mozenda operation is to be carried out):

&Operation=Agent.Run

Finally, the agent ID parameter, which is required by the Agent.Run API call, indicates which agent is to be run:

&AgentID=1009

GET and POST requests

Most of the operations available through the REST API use GET requests. We use a POST request when the operation may require more data than can fit in the URL.
For example, to add data to a collection in bulk, you can use the POST request version of Collection.AddItem. In the Mozenda REST API Documentation, for operations that use POST requests, it will specify the format of the data to be posted under the Request body subsection.

Postman

To assist our users with using the API, we have created a Postman library with all of the API operations attached. You can access that here.