Making a Request

Methods are executed by calling specific URLs and fetching the formatted output. URLs are formatted in the following format:

http://site.com/activecollab/public/api.php?path_info=#COMMAND#&token=#TOKEN#

Some requests may require more parameters. These parameters are added as regular query string (GET) parameters to the URL. Here is an example with two additional parameters:

http://site.com/activecollab/public/api.php?path_info=#COMMAND#&token=#TOKEN#&variable1=value1&variable2=value2

The API URL that you need to use to send a request (and your token) are available on the API Setting page of your profile page in activeCollab:

1. Output Formats

Currently supported output formats are XML and JSON. There are two ways of specifying output format:

  1. The recommended method which is to set the Accept request header. To get JSON, set it to 'application/json', or or 'application/xml' to get XML.
  2. The second method (which is added for convenience and to make testing easier) is to add a 'format' variable to a query string. Set it to 'json' to get JSON or 'xml' to get the XML formatted output. Here's an example: 
http://example.com/api.php?path_info=people/1&format=json

Response status is returned with status codes. For example, you will get 200 on success, 403 if you don't have permissions to access the page or 404 when you are trying to get an object that does not exist. You can learn more about HTTP status codes in HTTP 1.1 documentation.

Note

When submitting data to activeCollab by using a POST method, there needs to be a variable named "submitted" with a value of "submitted". If you don't provide it, then activeCollab will reject your request (probably with BAD REQUEST error).