Archivematica 1.13.2 is a legacy release, and these documents are no longer being maintained.

API overview

Archivematica exposes services and resources with the following REST-style APIs:

The Archivematica and Storage service APIs are designed to help you create custom solutions.

Archivematica API

The Archivematica API enables the following:

  • Coverage of some basic workflow functionality (e.g. listing and approving workflow tasks awaiting decision).
  • Proxy support to the Storage Service.
  • Exposing unit status or processing configuration details.

Archivematica API endpoints require authentication. See Authentication for additional information.

See Archivematica API for information on Archivematica API endpoints.

Storage Service API

If your system configuration includes the Archivematica Storage Service, then you may find the Storage Service API helpful for retrieving information about the following resources:

  • Pipeline
  • Space
  • Location

Storage Service API endpoints require authentication. See Authentication for additional information.

See Storage Service API for information on Storage Service API endpoints.

Authentication

All calls to the API endpoints require authentication with username and API key.

Archivematica’s Dashboard provides a simple cookie-based user authentication system using the Django authentication framework. Only authenticated users have access to the data.

Both the Archivematica API and Storage Service API use GET parameters by default to give access to authenticated users.

When setting GET parameters, the format is:

?username=<username>&api_key=<api_key>

When passing an API key value as part of the header, the format is:

Authorization: ApiKey <username>:<api_key>

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol should be enabled in the web server (typically Nginx) to ensure that all data transmitted between clients and the server is encrypted with secure algorithms and not viewable by third parties.

Generating an API key for a user

API keys are associated with user accounts, which you can manage in the Dashboard Administration tab. Archivematica users fall into two categories: administrators and non-administrators. Users who are administrators can create and edit user accounts. Administrators can also generate an API key for any user account in the database.

To generate an API key for an existing user in Archivematica:

  1. Navigate to Admin > Users, and then you will be redirected to the Users page.
  2. Select the user for whom you would like to generate an API key, and click their username or the Edit button. Archivematica will load the user’s Profile page.
  3. Click to enable the Regenerate API key box.
  4. Then click Save.
  5. In the Users page, click the username again to return to that user’s profile, and then you will see the regenerated API key.

Note

In the Storage Service, an API key is automatically generated for each new user. If you change the password for a given user, then a new API key will be randomly generated for that user.

Using an API key in a request

An API key value must be passed with each request to the API endpoints, or no response will be returned. Below is an example of using cURL to submit the requests with the API key in the header.

Example request (using curl):

curl -X GET \
https://sandbox.archivematica.org/api/transfer/completed/ \
-H 'Authorization: ApiKey admin:90e458ded261c7a5'

Example request header:

GET /api/transfer/completed/? HTTP/1.1
Host: sandbox.archivematica.org
Authorization: ApiKey admin:90e458ded261c7a5

Example response header:

HTTP/1.1 200
status: 200
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2019 02:26:54 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Language, Cookie
Content-Language: en

Archivematica 1.13.2

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Archivematica documentation by Artefactual Systems Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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