Getting Started with the Developer Program

Getting Started with the Jigsaw Search & Get API

Registering for a Mashery ID

If you haven't registered yet, please do apply for a Mashery ID to access all the features of the Jigsaw Developer Program. 

Here's how in 3 easy steps:

1. Enter your info here.  (Note: You only use your username when signing in. Your full name is what appears in the forums and welcome landing pages.)
2. Agree to the Developer Terms of Use.
3. Check your email and click the link in the confirmation email.

That's it!

Using your API token

Once you've registered, you'll have a live API token.

To use your API token:

1. Copy and paste your API token into your application's interface.
2. Build and test.
3. Deploy and start making money.

It's as simple as that, but let's expand on step two in a bit more detail.

Searching and Getting

With your active API token, you are now ready to place Jigsaw Company and Contact data into your application. Using Jigsaw data involves searching for the data and then getting that data. The specific details are in the documentation, but here is a Hello World-ish approach to get you started:

1. In your browser, paste the following:

https://www.jigsaw.com/rest/searchCompany.json?token=[[your_token ]]&name=www.jigsaw.com

You should see something similar to the following (note: some fields might be updated by the time you make this call):

PassThrough and Reseller Models

Let's pull some contact data and again leave the output for you as an exercise. There are two ways, depending on which "model" you are using, PassThrough or Reseller (Hybrid combines these two). Let's start with PassThrough, because it's simpler. PassThrough allows over a million existing Jigsaw users (and new users you attract to the service) to enter their credentials in your application and they then use their existing points to pull contact data, all without having to exit your application.

Sample PassThrough call:

https://www.jigsaw.com/rest/contacts/9107953.json?token=[[your_token]]&username=[[jigsaw_user_email_address]]&password=[[password]]

Next up is the Reseller model, which is a slightly more complex business relationship, but technically a simple one. Use this approach to sponsor the contacts your users lookup. As its name implies, it was designed with the reseller in mind and is capable of generating revenue for you with every contact get transaction. As a reseller, you pay Jigsaw a negotiated discount rate for contacts and bill your customers at a rate suitable for your business model (though never lower than your negotiated rate).

Sample Reseller call:

https://www.jigsaw.com/rest/partnerContacts/9107953.json?token=[[your_token]]&endOrgId=[[choose_your_own]]&endUserId=[[choose_your_own]]

There is a third model, Hybrid, which allows both existing Jigsaw users and users unique to your application to pull contact data.

Congratulations, you've just completed Search & Get 101! To further your education, please explore the full documentation set and start interacting in the forum (in fact, you should consider signing up for the RSS feed of the announcements, as you'll receive pushed notices of upcoming scheduled outages and other high-impact notifications. In particular, you'll want to focus on adding more refined search capabilities to your application, using the building blocks of searching and getting to create an innovative workflow that your customers will value.