Making your first API request
Making your first request
To make it quick and easy for you to build your GoCardless integration, we maintain libraries in Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, .NET and Go to talk to our API in those languages without writing lots of boilerplate code.
Setting up your client library
Let’s install the API library using a package manager (you can also download the source yourself from the links in the code blocks):
composer require gocardless/gocardless-proNow we can import the library into our code so that it’s ready to use:
require 'vendor/autoload.php';Creating an access token
To start using the API, you’ll need an access token.
First, sign up for an account in our sandbox: the sandbox is our dedicated testing environment where you can build and test your integration without touching real money.
Next, create an access token. Head to https://manage-sandbox.gocardless.com/developers/access-tokens/create, then give your access token a name and make sure you give it read-write access. Click “Create access token”, and copy the token to your clipboard.
Your very first API request
You’re now ready to initialise the client:
1<?php
2require 'vendor/autoload.php';
3
4$client = new \GoCardlessPro\Client([
5 // We recommend storing your access token in an
6 // environment variable for security
7 'access_token' => getenv('GC_ACCESS_TOKEN'),
8 // Change me to LIVE when you're ready to go live
9 'environment' => \GoCardlessPro\Environment::SANDBOX
10]);Now, let’s check that the client is working by making our first request to the API: List customers
1$customers = $client->customers()->list()->records;
2print_r($customers);Run that code and you should get an empty array, as you haven’t added any customers yet - but the fact that you got a response back shows that you’re authenticated and ready to go.
1Array
2(
3)