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Create API Request

Before starting to use API service, you need to do some simple configuration and preparation.

Now, let’s assume you’ve created project and credential, we’re ready to start creating a complete API request.

Request URL

Generally, a complete API request URL consists of scheme, host, port, path and query parameters. (Of course, it may be called differently in different programs, we only refer to RFC 3986)

https://abcxyz.qweatherapi.com/airquality/v1/station/{LocationID}?lang=en
\___/   \____________________/\____________________/\___________/\______/
scheme          host                   path            path       query
                                                      params      params
  • scheme: only supports HTTPS.
  • host: your API Host, view in the Console - Setting
  • path: API endpoint.
  • path params: the path parameters are all mandatory.
  • query params: multiple query parameters are separated by &.

Hint: URL encoding is required if the parameter contains special characters.

Add authentication

We created an API request URL in the previous step, now we need to add authentication to it so that the server can recognize our identity. Learn about Authentication.

JWT

Add the following to the request header:

Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiAiRWREU0EiLCJraWQiOiAiQUJDRDEyMzQifQ.eyJpc3MiOiJBQkNEMTIzNCIsImlhdCI6MTcwMzkxMjQwMCwiZXhwIjoxNzAzOTEyOTQwfQ.MEQCIFGLmpmAEwuhB74mR04JWg_odEau6KYHYLRXs8Bp_miIAiBMU5O13vnv9ieEBSK71v4UULMI4K5T9El6bCxBkW4BdA

API KEY

Add the following to the request header:

X-QW-Api-Key: ABCD1234EFGH

Gzip

QWeather’s Web API uses Gzip for compression by default, which will greatly reduce network traffic and speed up requests. See Best Practices - Gzip.

Build a complete API request

You can build the final API request with any programming language, here we use curl to obtain the real-time weather in Beijing as an example:

# Replace the placeholders with your actual values:
# abcxyz.qweatherapi.com → your API Host
# 1234.ABCD.5678 → your JWT
# ABCD1234EFGH → your API KEY

# Authentication with JWT

curl --compressed \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer 1234.ABCD.5678' \
'https://abcxyz.qweatherapi.com/v7/weather/now?location=101010100'

# Authentication with API KEY

curl --compressed \
-H "X-QW-Api-Key: ABCD1234EFGH" \
'https://abcxyz.qweatherapi.com/v7/weather/now?location=101010100'

Building an API URL is not difficult for most developers, but we still strongly recommend that you read the Best Practices- Optimize requests for troubleshooting and experience.