How to obtain a list of categories from the FWS API

Categories can be  retrieved by using the following URL and specifying a starting record number and ending record number.  If left blank, this will default to the first 50 records.  Categories are returned in order of name.

 

 Method URL
 GET  https://api.fairwarningsoftware.com/v1.1.1/categories/[start]/[limit]

 

 Status Response
 200

 {"categories":[
    {
        "category_id": <category_id>,
        "company_id": <company_id>,
        "category_active": <category_active>,
        "category_parent_id": <category_parent_id>,
        "category_name": <category_name>
    },
    "record_count" : <record_count>
]}

401  {"error":"The API keys provided are invalid."}
403  {"error":"API keys are missing."}
500  {"error": <custom error>}

 

 Field  Type Description
category_id int The unique identifier for the category
company_id int The ID for your company
category_active bool Whether the category is active or not
category_parent_id int The ID of the current category's parent category
category_name string The name of the category
record_count int The total number of records matching the search results

 

By default, only primary categories will be returned.  (Categories with no parent.)  To get sub categories, you must specify the parent category ID by passing it in the JSON raw post data.

{ "category_parent_id": { "operator" : "equals", "value": 59 } }

By passing this data string as raw post data, you will receive all categories that belong to the category with the ID of 59.

However, you may request a list of categories that include sub categories as well by passing "include_subs" with either a "1" or a "2" to get up to 1 or 2 levels of sub categories.  For instance:

{ "include_subs" : 2 }

This will return all primary categories with sub categories up to 2 levels deep.  This may also be used on the above search to include sub categories of the category with the ID of 59.