Getting Started

Welcome to the integration guide for the Backstage Front-End API. This guide will help you along with using the API in your apps to deliver the best experience to the end-user!

Before you start

There are 2 things you need in order to use the API: a service ID and application ID. These 2 together will determine where Backstage is going to grab it's data from and what kind of things are activated.

You can get these values from the Backstage team or by looking in the CMS.

API

The API is accessible via https://backstage-api.com, the service and application ID's are provided in headers called X-Service-ID and X-Application-ID.

Localisation

Most of the resources given to you through the API are localisable through the standard Accept-Language header. When you send this header you can indicate which languages you prefer to receive from the API.

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Accept-Language for more generic documentation about the header.

For example providing Accept-Language: nl;q=0.9, en;q=0.8, *;q=0.5 will try the following:

• Attempt to translate the resource to Dutch
• When not available try to translate the resource to English
• When not available fall back to the default language available

Backstage customers are in charge of translating their own content, if no translations are given Backstage will always give you the default value that they've inputted (either manually or via an external source).

If the device you're developing for either does not support the setting of this header, or mutates the value then you can provide the same data via a X-Accept-Language header. This will simply be used in place of the Accept-Language value if provided. Please note that if both values are provided then X-Accept-Language will always be preferred.