ClickBank API Specifications

Overview

NOTE: Using ClickBank's APIs may require a rudimentary understanding of computer programming. If you do not feel equipped to proceed, we encourage you to seek assistance from someone who has computer programming experience. 

ClickBank’s API methods are secure and will return a 403 [Forbidden] status code if accessed without the right credentials. To provide these credentials and access the ClickBank APIs, you must use an authorization header. This header must contain a Developer API Key and a Clerk API Key with the role required for the current task. You can create keys with these roles through the user interface.

Below find the following ClickBank API Specifications: 

• Authorization Parameter
• Certifications
• Infrastructure
• Headers and Sizing
• Output
• Pagination
• Quotas
  
  

Authorization Parameter

To access the APIs, you provide your developer API key and clerk API key in the authorization parameter. The authorization parameter uses the following format:

For example:

CLICK HERE for a step-by-step article on how to create an API key. 

Certifications

For some programming languages, the ClickBank APIs require your system to possess a certificate for the following domain:

*.clickbank.com

Verify that you have a certificate for this domain. The procedure for acquiring this certificate varies based on your browser, but your browser indicates a secure connection to the API pages above if the certificate is present.

Infrastructure

The ClickBank APIs are based on JSR-311 – the Java API for RESTful Web Services. The services are HTTP-based and implementation-agnostic, meaning that any web client (.NET, PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.) can use them.

Headers and Sizing

The ClickBank API header consists of security, output, and page parameters. The ClickBank APIs only accept query parameters; requests using form-based (post) parameters are ignored.

The HTTP specification limits a URL to 2,000 characters or fewer. Ensure that your ClickBank API URLs don’t exceed 2,000 characters.

Output

The ClickBank APIs support the following output formats:

• XML
• JSON

You select an output format by including an Accept parameter in the HTTP header.

For example, this header requests XML output: 

Pagination

The ClickBank APIs return the first 100 rows of data for any service call. If a request would contain more than 100 rows of data, the API returns the first 100 rows with a status code of 206 [Partial Content]. To retrieve the additional pages, include a Page parameter in the HTTP header indicating which pages to retrieve.

For example, this header requests page 3:

Once the final page has been accessed, the service returns a status code of 200 [OK] instead of 206 [Partial Content].

Quotas

To protect the ClickBank API system, quotas are placed on ClickBank API usage.

The default quotas are:

• A maximum of 25,000 requests per day per account.
• A maximum of ten requests per second per IP Address.

If a quota is exceeded, the ClickBank API will return a status code of 403 [Forbidden] and a message indicating that the quota has been met.