Overview

Let's start by looking at the layout and controls of the API Exploration main screen.

When you open API Exploration, you see the following icons on the left toolbar:

• Explore. This is the main API Exploration page. This is your main work area, and it displays tabs for each of your current operations.
• Spaces. You can group API operations into collections, like folders of bookmarks. For more information, see Assembling APIs into Spaces.
• History. This lists a log of 1000 previous operations in descending order by date.

Across the top of the screen are tabs. You can have tabs for different kinds of API operations. All tabs are closed when you exit API Exploration.

• Operation Details. Specify your protocol or operation. This section includes:

  • Protocol type. Kafka or REST.
  • Operation. For REST the operations are GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS or PATCH. For Kafka the operations are publish or subscribe.
  • Authorization Settings. Specify authorization credentials if required.
  • Connection Settings and Properties.
  • Headers and Parameters. Specify parameter values to be used in this operation.
  • Body. Enter text to be sent in the body of the operation.

• Server and Path. Enter the URL into the Server field. API Exploration automatically adds http:// if it is not already included and moves the path portion of the URL into the Path field.

• Settings display area. By default, the Headers and Parameters values are displayed in the settings display area. When you click on other settings, this area will change to display the chosen settings.

• Response. When you click Send, the response displays here.

Click the image to enlarge it.

Sample API Exploration Sequence

This section describes a sample API Exploration sequence. This example demonstrates how to return the OpenAPI definition for the Petstore API using a REST GET operation. To run this operation:

• Set the Protocol field to REST.
• Set the Operation field to GET.

• Paste this URL into the Server field:

  https://petstore3.swagger.io/api/v3/openapi.json

  API Exploration parses the URL and automatically updates the Path field.

• Click on the Send button to test this API call.

• The return values are shown in the Response section at the bottom of the screen -- by default the body of the response is displayed (with colored text for easier reading):

  

To learn more about API Exploration see the following topics:

• Tutorials
• Using API Exploration
• FAQ