Use the API to migrate your existing content into your Kentico Kontent project, or update content in unpublished content items. Note that the API cannot be used on published content unless you create new versions of the content items first, either in UI or through the Management API.

When retrieving and updating content via the Management API, you always work with the latest versions of content – the same as you would see in the Kentico Kontent user interface. Learn how to import content via the API by taking the tutorial on Importing to Kentico Kontent.

The base URL for all requests is https://manage.kontent.ai/v1/projects/<YOUR_PROJECT_ID>.

All requests to the API must be made securely with HTTPS with TLS 1.2 and authenticated with a valid API key. Requests to the API are rate limited and uncached.

cURL
curl --request GET \
  --url https://manage.kontent.ai/v1/projects/<YOUR_PROJECT_ID>/items \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_KEY>' \
  --header 'Content-type: application/json'

Note: The Management API does not provide any content filtering options and is not optimized for content delivery. If you need to deliver larger amounts of content, filter it, and leverage content caching, we recommend using the Delivery API instead.

To work with the Management API, send your requests over HTTPS and authenticate using the Authorization header in the following format: Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_KEY>.

We offer a .NET SDK available as the Kentico.Kontent.Management NuGet package to help interact with the API. However, no SDK is required to use the API.

The Management API returns standard HTTP status codes to indicate success or failure of a request. In general, status codes in the 2xx range indicate a successful request, status codes in the 4xx range indicate errors caused by an incorrect input (for example, providing incorrect API key), and status codes in the 5xx range indicate an error on our side.

For troubleshooting failed requests, the API provides error messages defined in a consumable format to help you identify and fix the issue.

If you cannot identify and resolve an issue with your API call, you can contact us with the response status and the request ID you get in the error response.

By default, the API keys for the Management API are valid for 4,000 days. The scope of the API keys is per project per user. This means you need a separate API key for each of your projects.

The API key inherits the identity of the user who generated it. Operations performed with the key will show in your version history as changes made by the specific user.

If you regenerate the API key before its expiration date, the system will revoke the previous API key after a short while. For requests made with a revoked API key, you'll receive the 403 Unauthorized error response.

JSON
{
    "request_id": "800000c0-0001-fc00-b63f-84710c7967bb",
    "error_code": 7,
    "message": "The provided API key was revoked. You can find a valid API key for this project in the Kentico Kontent app."
}

Note: 5 days before the API key expires, we will send a notification email to users with the Manage APIs capability.

Rate limits specify the number of requests you or your application can make to the Management API within a specific time window. There are three separate time windows (second, minute, hour) allowing a different number of requests each.

By default, the Management API enforces the following rate limits:

• 10 requests per second
• 400 requests per minute
• 15000 requests per hour

These limits apply to each API key for the Management API.

Note: We strongly advise against making multiple requests to the API in parallel. Doing so may cause unpredictable behavior and lead to inconsistencies in your content. We recommend that you wait for each request to finish before sending another one.

When you reach the limit of a specific time window, the API will reject the request and respond with the 429 HTTP error.

JSON
{
    "request_id": "80000004-0002-fd00-b63f-84710c7967bb",
    "error_code": 10000,
    "message": "API rate limit exceeded. Please retry your request later."
}

The error response will include the Retry-After header that tells you how many seconds you need to wait before attempting further requests. Each failed request is perfectly safe to retry.

If you begin to receive 429 HTTP errors, reduce the frequency of your requests.

References identify objects within your project. For example, you can use references to specify content types, content items, languages, and more.

When specifying references to objects, the object can be identified by one of three properties:

1. Its internal ID, such as 18b43cc5-f4fd-0172-842b-3ae2c878cf6f
   • Generated by the system automatically.
   • Can be used to specify any object.
2. Its codename, such as item_codename
   • Initially generated from the object's display name (see below for how).
   • Can be used to specify most objects.
3. Its external ID, such as object-id-from-another-system
   • Specified when creating the object through the Management API. The external ID cannot be changed.
   • Can be used to specify user-created assets, content items, content types, content groups, elements, languages, taxonomy groups, and taxonomy terms.

Note: The API uses internal IDs for referencing objects. This means that the reference objects in the API responses will always use internal IDs.

By using external IDs to reference other objects in your project, you can import your content in the order you prefer. For example, when importing multiple articles that contain images, you can reference these images with external IDs, such as roaster or coffee-cup, before uploading them.

The referenced images will be visible in the UI only after you add them as assets via the Management API. With this approach, you can choose whether you want to create content items first and then upload binary files for assets, or vice versa.

This means you can use external IDs to reference objects that don't yet exist in the project and add the objects via the API later.

To check whether your project contains any references to not-yet-created objects, see how to validate project content.

Note: References to non-existent objects will be stored and retrieved via the Management API as internal IDs.

Missing objects in the UI

If you reference non-existent objects by external IDs in your elements, the referenced objects won't be shown in the user interface. This is because the system cannot find those objects. The referenced assets and content items will be displayed after you create them with their specific external IDs via the Management API.

To add the missing objects, see:

• Upsert a content item to create content items specified by external IDs.
• Upsert an asset to create assets specified by external IDs.

To manage content items via the Management API, you need to send requests to URIs based on the following patterns:

• Using internal IDs: <base_URL>/items/<content_item_id>
• Using codenames: <base_URL>/items/codename/<content_item_codename>
• Using external IDs: <base_URL>/items/external-id/<content_item_external_identifier>

To retrieve language variants of a specific content item, you can list the variants by specifying the internal ID, codename, or external ID of the content item.

The content item object contains metadata about your content, such as the name of the content item and when the item was last modified. The content item object does not store the content itself. The content for each language variant of a content item is saved in language variants, with each content item having as many variants as there are active languages in your project.