APIs overview

The Content REST APIs allow you to work with the content in the database. You can retrieve, update, and manage content. The APIs provide you with the flexibility of leveraging existing content into various channels.
Access the Content APIs from API Reference. Each API service operation has a set of user roles that are allowed for the operation. You can call only the service operations that are allowed for the specific role a user has. The roles are

• Administrator - can access all functionality including subscription administration tasks such as adding/removing users.
• Manager - can create and manage content model, content, and assets.
• Editor - can create and manage content and assets.
• Viewer - can retrieve content and assets.
• Anonymous - cannot access any authoring functionality.

Throughput limits for subscriptions

Content is used simultaneously by multiple customers through their subscriptions. To process resources for all customers, Content limits the load that is imposed by each subscription. The throughput limit for trial and paying customers can be different. If the number of requests that are received by Content is below the throughput limit, the requests are processed without delay.
Content limits the number of requests per second per subscription if the number of incoming requests is above the throughput limit. The processing of the requests that are above the limit is delayed for a certain time until they can be processed. If the delay time for processing the requests is excessive, any additional requests are returned with the HTTP status code "429 Too Many Requests".

When you write client applications by using Content, you must be aware of the following scenarios:

• Requests from the client application can be returned with an HTTP status code 429. In such cases, the best approach would be to retry the request after some time.
• If a client program issues a high number of requests to Content API, limit the number of outstanding requests. Limiting the number of outstanding requests reduces the risk that requests are replied with HTTP status code 429. In case the client would issue too many requests per second, the request delay algorithm of Content would limit the throughput.
  You can use a command-line interface (CLI) based utility wchtools to work with content, assets, and content model artifacts for Content. The wchtools is an open-source utility that you can install from GitHub. You can use the tool to upload and download from your Content subscription. You can also use this tool to install sample content artifacts to your subscription, to bulk upload assets, and to trigger a publishing job. Find more information about installing wchtools.

The API documentation provides you with all the necessary information to get started. Before you start working with our APIs, take a look at a few use cases that demonstrate common business scenarios. These use cases will help you get a better context of the APIs may be relevant to your business needs.

Use cases

Import content to your product site or application

Accessing your content is quick and easy. Use our APIs to import the content into your products that you use to deliver content to your customers, or directly into sites and applications that you may already have set up. For example, say that your business uses a marketing tool to help deliver your promotional fliers and advertisements, you can access the content in Content with our APIs from the marketing tool and import the required images and content to the flier that you plan to deliver.

Target content specific for your immediate business need

Accessing specific content that meets your business needs anytime and from anywhere is quick and effortless. Say for example, your business manages publications and you have a news article that you already have ready to be published. You realize that changes are happening and the image you included is no longer relevant. With our APIs, you can access the exact image that you feel fit and replace the one in your content without changing the text or any other elements in the article with less effort. Choosing an exact image is made easy with AI tagging. Reference a tag that you think matches the image that you want in your API and only the images that match the tag are returned. For example, if you include the tag "White house" in your API call, only the images with the tag "White house" are returned, thus narrowing your search scope.