Cisco : Try the New Cisco DNA Center API Documentation – Interactive Edition

Good Documentation is Critical

When I teach my Introduction to Coding sessions, I stress that there are two items of utmost importance when it comes to API documents. First, API documentation is the starting point for any developer looking to integrate with a specific API. So, being able to read and understand what the endpoints are, and how to utilize the API, is crucial to building successful and efficient code. Second, well written API documentation allows developers to seamlessly integrate with your API.

As the Developer Advocate for DNA Center, I'm excited to share with you the latest on DNA Center API documentation - an interactive experience!

Cisco DNA Center API Documentation

Cisco DNA Center is at the heart of Cisco's intent-based network architecture. Typically, if you are looking to automate your network at a controller level it's prudent to leverage the APIs.

Part of the Cisco DNA Center platform is the documentation. You can access it via:

https://{{DNAC Server}}/dna/platform/app/consumer-portal/developer-toolkit/apis

What does 'interactive' mean?

Cisco DevNet always strives to give our developers the best experience possible using Cisco's APIs. This is why we've created a new, interactive API experience in our DevNet product tech sites. We've adopted it over multiple Cisco platforms including Cisco DNA Center.

So what does 'interactive' mean? What we have done here is minimize the heavy lifting of getting started with the API to allow our developers to focus on the code itself and not get lost in the getting started.

We've done that by:

• Pre-rendered API methods in browser for ease of testing
• Global credentials available throughout the sessions
• Dynamically generated code snippets in python, node, and curl

So let me show you how easy it to test out DNA Center APIs using the new interactive experience.

This is the endpoint to authenticate against an instance of DNA Center

From within the interactive documentation experience you can formulate your API call and test it, simply like this:

• Select Configuration
• Enter DNA Center information
  • Host - this is your host information
  • Global Headers - Authorization header key and Base64 encoding of your credentials
• Save the information entered and click Run

Et voila! you've successfully made your first DNA Center API call using our interactive documentation.

I'm excited to share this with you. So, if you'd like to get started working with the new API documentation feel free to check out the new docs on DevNet!

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