Using Our (Seriously!) Friendly API
AuctionWiser has developed an API for users of all experience levels. The API allows you to Search GSA Auctions and access item Watchlists directly from our database. The best part is that you are able to choose between three (3) main results return formats: JSON, Excel XLSX and Excel CSV. The JSON return format is made specifically with developers in mind. And the Excel formats are friendly for all user levels. We are going to walk through a step by step tutorial using our Interactive API!
Disclaimer: The API Is (Mostly) Members Only
There are some endpoints available to everyone to access (All Live Auctions and All Auctions Closing Today). However, due to the level of richness in our features and data, we have limited API keys (tokens) for only our Premium members only. Once you become a Premium Member, the API token will be revealed on their "Account" tab. Please Contact Us if you are having trouble locating your token.
1. Once you navigate to our API Page, you must first authenticate to use our secured API endpoints. To do that, please locate on the page (like in image) for a button that says "Authorize" and click it. This is where you will insert your API key that is found on your Account page (copy/paste).
2. The next step is to Click the Authorize button shown above and then enter in your API Token. Then Click Authorize again! Now you have access protected API endpoints.
3. Now that you are authenticated, click on the "Search" line on the API page. You will need to hit the "Try it out" button to unlock the parameter fields. We will walk through how to perform an example search and then download the results to Microsoft Excel format XLSX (.xlsx filename).
4. At this point, its time to enter in the search parameters for items that we want to look for! The status is the current auction status (whether its live, closed, or upcoming). The category drop down allows you to choose a specific category. (We'll search All in this example). The desc field allows you to enter specific key words to look for. These keywords are found in the item description. For this example, we will use the words "working condition" to look for items that have been reported to be working. ("Like new" or "unused" are also good!) The name field filters items to be like a specific name (We will leave blank to search for *any name*). The next field is the file_format field and it is our favorite feature! You can choose between JSON, Excel XLSX or CSV. The JSON format is typically for programmers and developers. We want to view our results in Excel XLSX, so we choose that one! The last parameter is include_timeseries, and this toggles whether or not to include the bid history of each item in the file. Because we are not doing any bid analysis, we will leave it set to false. Once we have entered our fields, it is time to hit Execute!
*Please note that searching for "All" item statuses or "Closed" items may take up to two minutes to populate results!*
5. That's it! Now you simply need to click "Download file" and the file will download into your browser. If you ever want to run this exact same search again in the future, you simply just need to copy and paste the Request URL example line into your browser to execute again!
You can also begin looking for items using our extensive and advanced Search platform
