Working with the ArchivesSpace API

This documentation provides general information on working with the API. For detailed documentation of specific endpoints, see the API reference, which is maintained separately.

Authentication

Most actions against the backend require you to be logged in as a user with the appropriate permissions. By sending a request like:

 POST /users/admin/login?password=login

your authentication request will be validated, and a session token will be returned in the JSON response for your request. To remain authenticated, provide this token with subsequent requests in the X-ArchivesSpace-Session header. For example:

 X-ArchivesSpace-Session: 8e921ac9bbe9a4a947eee8a7c5fa8b4c81c51729935860c1adfed60a5e4202cb

Since not all backend/API end points require authentication, it is best to restrict access to port 8089 to only IP addresses you trust. Your firewall should be used to specify a range of IP addresses that are allowed to call your ArchivesSpace API endpoint. This is commonly called whitelisting or allowlisting.

Example requests using CURL

Send request to authenticate:

curl -s -F password="admin" "http://localhost:8089/users/admin/login"

This will return a JSON response that includes something like the following:

{
   "session":"9528190655b979f00817a5d38f9daf07d1686fed99a1d53dd2c9ff2d852a0c6e",
   ....
}

It’s a good idea to save the session key as an environment variable to use for later requests:

#Mac/Unix terminal
export SESSION="9528190655b979f00817a5d38f9daf07d1686fed99a1d53dd2c9ff2d852a0c6e"

#Windows Command Prompt
set SESSION="9528190655b979f00817a5d38f9daf07d1686fed99a1d53dd2c9ff2d852a0c6e"

#Windows PowerShell
$env:SESSION="9528190655b979f00817a5d38f9daf07d1686fed99a1d53dd2c9ff2d852a0c6e"

Now you can make requests like this:

curl -H "X-ArchivesSpace-Session: $SESSION" "http://localhost:8089/repositories/2/resources/1

CRUD

The ArchivesSpace API provides CRUD-style interactions for a number of different “top-level” record types. Working with records follows a fairly standard pattern:

 # Get a paginated list of accessions from repository '123'
 GET /repositories/123/accessions?page=1

 # Create a new accession, returning the ID of the new record
 POST /repositories/123/accessions
 {... a JSON document satisfying JSONModel(:accession) here ...}

 # Get a single accession (returned as a JSONModel(:accession) instance) using the ID returned by the previous request
 GET /repositories/123/accessions/456

 # Update an existing accession
 POST /repositories/123/accessions/456
 {... a JSON document satisfying JSONModel(:accession) here ...}

Performing API requests

Additional documentation is needed for these sections - please consider contributing documentation via a pull request to this repo

GET requests

Resolving associated records

Additional documentation needed

Requests for paginated results

Additional documentation needed

Working with long results sets

Additional documentation needed

Search requests

Additional documentation needed

POST requests

Updating existing records

Additional documentation needed

Creating new records

Additional documentation needed

DELETE requests

Additional documentation needed