Connecting to BI tool's REST API using rcurl - r

Question

I am trying to connect directly to a BI tool's API from within R. The API Documentation lists the curl command below to obtain an authentication token:
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d
'{
"email": "your#email.com",
"password": "your_password"
}'
https://app.datorama.com/services/auth/authenticate
Further, below is an example of a JSON query that can be used to query data:
{
"brandId": "9999",
"dateRange": "CUSTOM",
"startDate": "2016-01-01",
"endDate": "2016-12-31",
"measurements": [
{
"name": "Impressions"
}
],
"dimensions": [
"Month"
],
"groupDimensionFilters": [],
"stringDimensionFilters": [],
"stringDimensionFiltersOperator": "AND",
"numberDimensionFiltersOperator": "AND",
"numberMeasurementFilter": [],
"sortBy": "Month",
"sortOrder": "DESC",
"topResults": "50",
"groupOthers": true,
"topPerDimension": true,
"totalDimensions": []
}
I'm trying to 1) translate the curl command above into R so as to obtain the authentication token required, and 2) query the data through the JSON script above.
So far i've attempted using the httr library as follows:
library(httr)
r <- POST('https://app.datorama.com/services/auth/authenticate',
body = list(
brandId = "9999",
dateRange = "CUSTOM",
measurements = list(name="Impressions"),
dimensions = list(name="Month"),
startDate = "2016-01-01",
endDate = "2016-12-31"
),
encode = "json",
authenticate("username", "password"))
to no avail.
The API documentation is behind a password protected page and as such i'm unable to link it. Let me know if additional information is required.

Answer 1

hrbrmstr is totally right! you should generate two api calls, the first one is to authenticate the user and the second one is to query the data.
Below is a fully working example of using the Datorama query API from R. feel free to contact the Datorama support for any additional questions.
library(httr)
res <- POST("https://app.datorama.com/services/auth/authenticate",
body=list(email="your#email.com",
password="your_password"),
encode="json")
token <- content(res)$token
res_query <- POST(paste("https://app.datorama.com/services/query/execQuery?token=",token, sep=""),
body = list(
brandId = "9999",
dateRange = "CUSTOM",
measurements = list(list(name = "Impressions")),
dimensions = list("Month"),
startDate = "2016-01-01",
endDate = "2016-12-31"
),
encode = "json")
cat(content(res_query, "text"), "\n")

Answer 2

I don't have access to their API and would have prbly written a small wrapper pkg to this service if they had a free tier. Having said that,
curl -X POST \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "email": "your#email.com",
"password": "your_password" }'
translates to:
library(httr)
res <- POST("https://app.datorama.com/services/auth/authenticate",
body=list(email="your#email.com",
password="your_password"),
encode="json")
They don't have their app API documentation online for free either but I'm going to assume it sends back a JSON response with some type of authorization_token and encoded string.
You then—most likely—need to pass that result with every subsequent API call (and there is probably a timeout where the initial auth will need to be re-upped).
authenticate() is used for HTTP basic auth, not for this type of in-API JSON/REST auth.
Your actual API call looks fine apart from using the token auth.