Supply Chain

Welcome to the Tagged Products walkthrough. As you read through and try the example API requests, you will be introduced to the basics of using the EVRYTHNG Platform in the tagged products context. You'll learn about:

• Projects and applications, which are used to scope resources.
• Products and Thngs, which are the core data storage resources in the Platform.
• Actions, which can be used to model data update events and notifications.
• Limiting access to data with roles and visualizing it through widget dashboards.

This API walkthrough is themed around a simple inventory management scenario — using the EVRYTHNG Platform to gain insights into a supply chain and the tagged product’s journey from factory to store. We model the data and interactions such a product would make through the Platform during this lifecycle.

All the examples here use cURL, a standard Mac/Linux terminal program used to make web requests. You can simply paste the examples into your Mac or Linux terminal and immediately see the results. In some cases, you must replace a placeholder with a real value you got from previous steps. In most cases, you must replace $OPERATOR_API_KEY in each example with your own.

Preparing an Account

To use the EVRYTHNG Platform, create a free account and get an Operator API Key. One of several types of API keys, the Operator API Key allows requests to be made on behalf of an account holder and has the highest privileges.

To begin, create a Dashboard account and log in. The EVRYTHNG Dashboard lets you visually interact with all the resources in your account and is good for performing small-scale tasks. Besides managing resources, you can set up and use widget dashboards to gain insights into the data in your account. But for this API walkthrough, we only require the Operator API Key.

Click your account name in the top right menu and choose Account Settings. Click Show key to display the Operator API Key and click the copy icon. Paste it into a plain text editor so you can refer back to the operator key as you continue this walkthrough.

Using the Examples

To make using the walkthrough code examples as simple as possible, we recommend you export your Operator API Key at the start of your terminal session. This saves you from having to insert it into every request. For example, in your user profile (such as .bash_profile or similar), or in the terminal itself:

export OPERATOR_API_KEY=1FGqgM8xr13ggAy9...

As more types of API keys are introduced, export them as well using the names specified in the examples as needed. For example, APPLICATION_USER_API_KEY for the Application User API Key.