About Interfolio APIs and Documentation
All APIs built into Interfolio software follow REST API standards, including the following HTTP methods:
- GET method to read data
- POST method to create or add data elements
- PUT method to update data elements
- DELETE to destroy data elements
All data is returned as JSON (though there are a very few exceptions that publish HTML output.) Input data can be either JSON, or there are some “bulk” processing API endpoints that take CSV data and data files. Sample JSON output of appropriate endpoints is shown in the documentation for that endpoint.
Interfolio’s current Faculty Information System has 3 major applications: Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR), Faculty Search (FS), and Review, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT). All of these applications have an API, and since FS and RPT utilize similar data structures, they share a common API labeled as “BYC” for By Committee. In addition to these two APIs for our three applications, there are also some “core” APIs that allow access to the shared data between applications: users, academic units, etc.
To request API keys from Interfolio, please complete this survey.
Getting help developing client applications to use Interfolio's APIs
Currently there are three sources of help for developing client applications to utilize the data and functionality of Interfolio’s APIs. These are described below.
1. The “recipes” within this cookbook:
Each of these recipes looks at a particular use case and acts as a guide for: what API elements are needed to complete that use case, what would need to be in place in the software for each use case to work meaningfully, and further notes and caveats on using the APIs to complete the use case. They do not, as a rule, contain sample code.
2. The library of code examples:
These are working code examples that Interfolio and its customers have written that utilize the APIs. They are presented in multiple languages, but focus on PHP, Python, and JavaScript. (Note: if you would like to contribute sample code to the library please send an email to help@interfolio.com
3. API Documentation:
- Faculty180 API Documentation
- Platform-wide User Management
- Review, Promotion & Tenure
- Lifecycle (Review, Promotion & Tenure and Faculty Search) Data management (manage users, units and access permissions)
- Faculty Search
- Lifecycle Management
Swagger
All documentation for Interfolio APIs is written in Swagger. The documentation is embedded within the actual code for the API endpoint, and is extracted dynamically to generate the API documentation pages. This allows the developer working on API code to simultaneously document the features they are working in the Swagger documentation. This in turn helps guarantee that our API documentation stays current with the API code.
HMAC Authentication
All Interfolio APIs utilize HMAC authentication. This authentication method requires a set of private and public keys issued by Interfolio (to obtain these keys the customer should contact their project manager or customer success manager.) These keys are then used to generate an encrypted authentication string that is unique for and sent with every API request. Some people find initiating HMAC authentication the first time can be somewhat complex, to facilitate this we have numerous help resources including a recipe on this site and multiple example scripts showing how HMAC authentication is done in multiple languages.