Use the API

Learn about using the Firebolt API to interact with Firebolt.

Use the Firebolt REST API to execute queries on engines programmatically. Learn how to use the API, including authentication, working with engines and executing queries. A service account is required to access the API. Learn about managing programmatic access to Firebolt.

Create a service account and associate it with a user

Create a service account with organization administrator privilege, i.e., the service account property_is_organization_admin_ must be true. Next, create a user with role privileges you would like to have the service account and associate the service account with the user.

Use tokens for authentication

To authenticate Firebolt using the service accounts with the properties as described above via Firebolt’s REST API, send the following request to receive an authentication token:

curl -X POST --location 'https://id.app.firebolt.io/oauth/token' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'grant_type=client_credentials' \
--data-urlencode 'audience=https://api.firebolt.io' \
--data-urlencode "client_id=${service_account_id}" \
--data-urlencode "client_secret=${service_account_secret}"

where:

Property	Data type	Description
client_id	TEXT	The service account ID.
client_secret	TEXT	The service account secret.

Response

{
  "access_token":"access_token_value",
  "token_type":"Bearer",
  "expires_in":86400
}

In the previous example response, the following apply:

• The access_token is a unique token that authorizes your API requests that acts as a temporary key to access resources or perform actions. You can use this token to authenticate with Firebolt’s platform until it expires.
• The token_type is Bearer, which means that the access token must be included in an authorization header of your API requests using the format: Authorization: Bearer <access_token>.
• The token expires_in indicates the number of seconds until the token expires.

Use the returned access_token to authenticate with Firebolt.

To run a query using the API, you must first obtain the url of the engine you want to run on. Queries can be run against any engine in the account, including the system engine.

Get the system engine URL

Use the following endpoint to return the system engine URL for <account name>.

curl https://api.app.firebolt.io/web/v3/account/<account name>/engineUrl \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <access token>'

Example: https://api.app.firebolt.io/web/v3/account/my-account/engineUrl

Response

{
  "engineUrl":"<prefix>.api.us-east-1.app.firebolt.io"
}

Execute a query on the system engine

Use the following endpoint to run a query on the system engine:

curl --location 'https://<system engine URL>' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <access token>' \
--data '<SQL query>'

where:

Property	Data type	Description
system engine URL	TEXT	The system engine URL (retrieved here)
SQL query	TEXT	Any valid SQL query
(optional) database name	TEXT	The database name

Get a user engine URL

Get a user engine url by running the following query against the information_schema.engines table:

SELECT url 
FROM information_schema.engines 
WHERE engine_name='<engine_name>'

You can run the query on the system engine using the API with the following request:

curl --location 'https://<system engine URL>/query' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <access token>' \
--data 'SELECT * FROM information_schema.engines WHERE engine_name='\''my_engine'\'''

Execute a query on a user engine

Use the following endpoint to run a query on a user engine:

curl --location 'https://<user engine URL>&database=<database name>' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <access token>' \
--data '<SQL query>'

where:

Property	Data type	Description
user engine URL	TEXT	The user engine URL (retrieved here)
database name	TEXT	The database to run the query
SQL query	TEXT	Any valid SQL query

Queries are per request. To run multiple statement queries, separate queries each into one request.

OpenAPI spec

For a full definition of the query API, see the OpenAPI spec.

API limits

Request Size Limits

By default, Firebolt enforces request size limits of 2 MiB for User Engines, and 32 KiB for the System Engine. If you exceed these limits, you will get an error like:

413: Request body is larger than configured limit of 20971520 bytes. Please contact support if you need to send larger queries to support your workload

These limits are configurable, so please contact our support team if they are insufficent for your usecase.

Ratelimiting

For information about ratelimits on System Engines, see here.

There are no ratelimits on User Engines.