Details on Developer Portal Changes. (08/10/22)

Berkeley’s API Developer Portal, “API Central,” is changing only slightly as part of our new platform project, but the improvements are important to note as they may require changes in your operations. They involve enhanced security practices for API availability management and credential secrets management.

These both show up in the dev portal user interface in an API’s details. For this example, we’ll use the SIS Class API (but you should look under an API for which you’ve been granted access credentials):

SIS Class API card

Clicking on the “card” while browsing APIs takes you to its overview page. On the right side is a small menu of child pages–we want to look at the “API Credentials”:

API sub-menu showing "API Credentials" selected

You should have several credentials for any API you have access to (e.g., for your dev, test, and production environments)–to see the details, we just need to click on one.

API credential table showing one row

In the new portal, you’ll see all of the information associated with your credentials immediately (including a mandatory organization name):

Current credential info display

Credential info display (current dev portal)

New credential info display

Credential info display (new portal)

API availability

You’ll also see details about the access plan associated with your credentials, which will include rate limiting, or the maximum total number of calls you can make to the API per second, and a quota, or the maximum total number of times you can call it per day:

Access plan display (current dev portal)

Access plan display (current dev portal)

New access plan info display

Access plan info display (new dev portal)

Here are all of the the API access plans and their corresponding new limits:

Plan Name
Rate Limits
per second per day ("quota")
Admissions API 15 64,000
Admissions API read_only 15 64,000
Athlete API 10 61,000
Athlete API read_only 10 61,000
BFS Chart of Accounts API 5 5,000
Campus Persons API 30 50,000
CCES 5 8,500
Class API 265 3,018,000
Course API 5 15,000
Descriptors API 5 5,000
Document Imaging 5 2,500
Enrollment API 170 195,000
HR Departments API 90 272,000
HR Employees API 75 850,500
HR Events API 5 98,000
HR JobCodes API 45 214,000
HR Positions API 45 211,000
ImagineAccess 5 10,000
Master Org Tree 5 85,000
SIS Campus User Provisioning Service 175 932,500
SIS Event Notifications API 350 3,398,000
SIS Google API 5 11,000
SIS-Person API 25 215,500
SIS Student API 310 1,720,500
Student Address API 10 19,500
Student Checklist API 15 838,500
Student Checklist API read_only 15 838,500
Terms API 10 84,500
UCPath Realtime Interfaces 5 85,000
UCPath Security Profiles API 5 85,000

We’ve set these at many times the maximum usage we’ve seen in the past, so you should never run up against them. However, if you were to, you’d simply receive a “429 - Too many requests” status in reply and have to wait for another second (or day) to try again.

Credential Secrets

The most important change is in how the secret portion of the credentials, the “app_key,” is managed. While the app_key currently is stored in the devportal database, in the new portal only the last four characters will be stored–much like SSNs and credit card numbers are often managed. (NB: this means that you’ll need to record all of your existing app_keys before the current dev portal is taken off line on November 11.)

App_key display (current dev portal)

App_key display (current dev portal)

App_key display (new dev portal)

App_key display (new dev portal)

In the new portal, the only time you’ll be able to see the full app_key is when it is first created:

Current second app_key display

Added app_key display (current dev portal)

New second app_key display (temporary)

Temporary app_key display (new dev portal)

New two app_keys display

Added app_key display (new dev portal)