Getting started with the CDP API

API access methods

CDP offers a CLI client, and all API commands have a CLI equivalent. See the CLI documentation for more details.

Java programmers might prefer to use the CDP SDK for Java. For more information, see the SDK documentation.

Alternatively, you can access API endpoints directly through your chosen HTTP client, such as curl. Cloudera offers cdpcurl, which is a Python command line tool that you can use to directly make CDP API calls, or embed in an application. cdpcurl returns JSON output for ease of use. It is based on awscurl and installation and usage are similar. Like the CDP CLI and SDK, cdpcurl has built-in CDP request signing to construct the headers required to make an API call. However, if you want to use a different HTTP client, such as curl, you can use a script within cdpcurl to generate the required headers.

You can also use the CDP API service definition files to create your own client-side code. The service definitions are in OpenAPI / Swagger 2.0 format and can be accessed here.

Generating an API access key

A CDP user account must have API access credentials (an API access key and private key) to access the CDP API through the CLI or other means. To use the CLI client, you configure the CDP client with the API access key and private key. To make API calls with cdpcurl, you pass the API access key and private key to cdpcurl.

Permissions

You are restricted to making API calls that are permissible based upon your user roles and resource roles. For more information on user roles, see the topic Understanding Roles and Resource Roles in the Management Console documentation.