Getting Started With The API

The Handshake API is intended to be a platform-agnostic means by which programmers can build integrations between Handshake and other applications and services.

Handshake provides a robust set of spreadsheet / ZIP file-based methods of importing and exporting data, however, these are ultimately somewhat manual in nature. If you want a more automated integration between Handshake and your other systems, you'll want to connect to our API.

Quickstart

To use the Handshake API, you will need an API key, which is a long string of random numbers and letters that you will use as a password when accessing the API. You can generate (or re-generate) your API key via your user page.

Now that you have your API key, you can view some XML output from the API right in your web browser by visiting https://app.handshake-app.com/api/v2/orders?format=xml (you must be logged in for this to work). Firefox is an especially good browser for viewing XML in a nice readable format.

You should have seen a big pile of XML with data from the orders you've written in your account (assuming that you've actually written some). We also support generating data in JSON, which you can get by visiting https://app.handshake-app.com/api/v2/orders?format=json instead.

Although spitting out huge chunks of data in your browser is fun, you probably want to access the API from scripts or integration tools instead. We'll cover that in the next page.