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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.

API Host

For a higher level of API security, we provide every developer with a independent, data-isolated API Host, also known as the API address or API domain name. The API Host can be viewed in Console - Settings and looks like:

abc.xyz.qweatherapi.com

You need to concatenate the API Host with the API path and parameters, or fill the API Host into the configuration file when using the SDK.

API URL and parameters

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://abc123.qweatherapi.com/airquality/v1/station/{LocationID}?lang=en
\___/   \____________________/\____________________/\___________/\______/
scheme          host                   path            path       query
                                                      params      params
  • scheme: https
  • host: your API Host, view in the Console - Setting
  • path: /airquality/v1/station
  • path params: location ID
  • query params: lang=en Splitting multiple parameters with &.

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, using curl as an example here:

curl --compressed \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiAiRWREU0EiLCJraWQiOiAiQUJDRDEyMzQifQ.eyJpc3MiOiJBQkNEMTIzNCIsImlhdCI6MTcwMzkxMjQwMCwiZXhwIjoxNzAzOTEyOTQwfQ.MEQCIFGLmpmAEwuhB74mR04JWg_odEau6KYHYLRXs8Bp_miIAiBMU5O13vnv9ieEBSK71v4UULMI4K5T9El6bCxBkW4BdA' \
'https://api.qweather.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.