---
url: /api/docs/authentication.md
---
# Getting Started

This documentation will guide you through our REST API endpoints.

### Authentication

Before you start, generate your API Key from [here](https://packetvis.com/settings/apikeys). API KEYs are associated with your organization and must be appended to all requests.

When creating an API key, you can configure its access permissions (read-only or read-write) and set an expiration date.

For security reasons, we recommend using read-only API keys unless you explicitly need to modify configurations through the API.

### Data Format

All API endpoints return responses in **JSON format**, following a consistent structure with two top-level fields: `data` and `metadata`.

* **`data`**: Contains the primary response payload, including the requested resources or results. It can be a dictionary or an array, depending on the endpoint and the nature of the response.
* **`metadata`**: Contains supplementary information about the response, such as caching status, pagination details, rate limits, api version, server instance, and other relevant context. **Do not rely on the presence or absence of specific fields in `metadata`, as these may vary across endpoints and change over time without prior notice. For most use cases, you can safely ignore `metadata` altogether.**

```json
{
  "data": {},
  "metadata": {}
}
```