What the Covata API can do

The Covata API allows your application to:

Authenticate and authorize a Covata user to the Covata Platform,
Obtain a cryptographic key from the Covata Platform's Access Service, which is required for encrypting or decrypting a Secure Object's data,
Initialize a new 'Incomplete' Secure Object by associating the cryptographic key with this new Secure Object,
Create a completed Secure Object by encrypting its data locally, either for:
- Remote storage uploaded to and handled by the Covata Platform's Content Service, or
- Storage handled independently by your application,
Create a completed Secure Object by uploading its unencrypted data to the Content Service for encryption, then storage and
Create a 'collection' for managing groups of Secure Objects.
Retrieve a list of information about:
- All immediate Secure Objects and collections (i.e. items) of a common parent,
- All items filtered by text search,
- All items based on ownership or sharing status, or
- All ancestral collections of a specific Secure Object or collection.

The Covata Platform keeps a record of all Secure Objects and collections created, as well as information about which users are collaborators on each Secure Object or collection.

To perform the activities above, a Covata user is required to authenticate to the Covata Platform, which permits access to the Covata Platform's resources (i.e. through Covata API endpoints) that are available to this user.

Tools for accessing the Covata API

cURL

Example API calls used throughout this Getting Started Guide are based on the standard command line tool cURL, which allows you to construct API requests at the command line to submit to the appropriate endpoints of either the Covata Platform's Access or Content Services.

Postman - REST Client

The Google Chrome tool Postman - REST Client, provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows you to construct and save a set of API endpoint requests to submit to the Covata Platform. Postman also allows you to upload data files to submit as part of a request (e.g. binary data as part of a multi-part form data element).

Getting Started Guide contents

This Getting Started Guide consists of the following sections: