Make your first request

This walkthrough finds an organization and retrieves its full published record. Use a server, terminal or private development environment.

1. Create a key

Create a DefDex account, verify your email, and open API keys. Create a key with data:read. Copy the value when it is shown; it is displayed only once.

Load it privately into the DEFDEX_API_KEY environment variable. Do not put it in a URL, source file, screenshot or browser bundle. The examples below read that variable and never contain a real key.

2. Find an organization

curl --fail-with-body --get \
  'https://app.defdex.io/api/v1/datasets/organizations' \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $DEFDEX_API_KEY" \
  --header 'Accept: application/json' \
  --data-urlencode 'q=Anduril' \
  --data-urlencode 'limit=5'

Search is case-insensitive substring matching. Compare the returned name, website, country and identifiers before selecting a match; search does not resolve identity. An empty data array is a successful query with no matches.

A list response has this shape (values below are illustrative):

{
  "data": [{
    "record_id": "OPAQUE_RETURNED_RECORD_ID",
    "attributes": {
      "id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001",
      "name": "Example organization",
      "type": "company",
      "website": null
    }
  }],
  "next_cursor": null,
  "build_id": "EXAMPLE_BUILD"
}

Actual attributes follow the organization reference. Do not copy the placeholder ID into a real lookup.

3. Retrieve the exact record

Use record_id from the response, encoded as one URL segment:

from defdex import DefDexClient
api = DefDexClient()  # reads DEFDEX_API_KEY
page = api.list("organizations", q="Anduril", limit=5)
if page["data"]:
    match = page["data"][0]  # inspect identity before using a match in production
    detail = api.get("organizations", match["record_id"])
    print(detail["data"]["attributes"]["name"])

Install the Python client using the client guide. attributes.id is the entity UUID used in relationship filters. record_id is the opaque lookup identifier used by GET /datasets/{dataset}/{record_id}. They are different values. Website slugs are another identifier; use an exact slug filter to resolve one.

4. Continue your workflow

Read agencies, programs or awards. To discover all collections and allowed fields, call GET /datasets. To read more than one page, follow pagination.

On an error, inspect the status, JSON error and X-Request-Id; see errors and retries. Avoid cURL verbose output when sharing diagnostics: it can include the authorization header.