Concepts

Requests made to the Geotab API are performed over HTTPS. The current API is version 1. The version number is appended to the API endpoint URL, where the web application sends requests:

https://[myserver]/apiv1

NOTE: Sample text inside [ and ] (e.g. [myserver]) are placeholders to indicate where the user enters information unique to their requirements.

API request parameters and their results are transported using the lightweight JSON format. The API reference contains a list of methods that can be invoked, including the parameters they expect, and the results they return. Examples are provided below to demonstrate what the Geotab API can do.

Requests to the Geotab API are invoked using HTTP GET or HTTP POST. HTTP POST requests use the JSON-RPC standard. When making requests that contain MyGeotab credentials, use the POST request only. This helps to minimize potential leaks into browser histories, or web server logs.

The following sections explain how to construct HTTP GET and POST requests to the Geotab API.

Security

MyGeotab API requests can only be made over secure connections (HTTPS). The minimum SSL/TLS version supported by the MyGeotab API is TLS v1.2.

Geotab recommends that all users of Geotab APIs adhere to modern cryptography best practices. When using our libraries, we recommend that developers use algorithms and ciphers that provide the most forward secrecy and the greatest adherence to modern compliance requirements.

At the time of writing this document, best practices implies that we use AES-256 (or stronger) cipher suites and algorithms with a modern cipher mode, such as GCM or CCM. We recommend utilizing modern key exchange algorithms such as DHE or ECDHE. RSA3072 or the equivalent elliptic cryptographic algorithm should be use for asymmetric cryptography. We recommend SHA3 for all hashing operations. When using modern network communications software, the latest version of TLS (TLS1.3 at the time of writing) should be used.

Make your first API call

While both GET and POST requests are supported, we strongly recommend that only POST requests are used for requests that include MyGeotab credentials as parameters.

The endpoint shown below is used to invoke an API method when an HTTP POST request is used. The example that follows illustrates a POST request that returns all devices (vehicles) and their properties.

https://[myserver]/apiv1/

The method’s name and parameters are passed in the HTTP body using the JSON-RPC format. Geotab API version 1 supports JSON-RPC version 2.0. The full set of API methods and objects returned can be viewed in the API reference.

To understand which parameters must be passed, consider the following JSON object:

{
    "typeName":"Device",
        "credentials": {
            "database":"acme",
            "userName":"bob@acme.com",
            "sessionId":"1234"
        }
}

To understand how HTTP POST can be used to invoke a method, consider the following JavaScript example. This can be achieved from any language that supports HTTP, such as the java.net.HttpUrlConnection class in Java, or System.Net.Http.HttpClient in .Net.

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();

request.open("POST", "https://my.geotab.com/apiv1", true);

request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");

request.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (request.readyState === 4) {
        if (request.status === 200) {
            var json = JSON.parse(request.responseText);
            if (json.result) {
                // Work with your result
                // Simple example just alerts its presence
                console.log(json.result);
            }
        }
    }
};

// Send the HTTP BODY in the JSON-RPC format.
// The method being called is "Get".
// The "Get" method's parameters are then passed in the "params" property

var data = {
    "id": 0,
    "method": "Get",
    "params": {
        "typeName": "Device",
        "credentials": {
            "database": "demo",
            "userName": "example@geotab.com",
            "sessionId": "xxx"
        }
    }
};

request.send(JSON.stringify(data));

Results and Errors

Using the example above, a successful request to the server results in an object with the property “result” in the following format:

Generic:

{
    "result":"results",
    "jsonrpc":"2.0"
}

Specific:

{
    "result":"5.7.1801.122",
    "jsonrpc":"2.0"
}

However, if the request is incorrect, or an error is triggered on the server, the error is returned as an object with the property “error”. For example:

{
    "error":{
        "code":-32000,
        "data":{
            "id":"5531c760-4ff7-485c-bb47-b6ed509b76d6",
            "type":"InvalidUserException",
            "requestIndex":0
        },
        "message":"Incorrect login credentials"
    },
    "jsonrpc":"2.0"
}

The properties of the error object are JsonRpcError, and JsonRpcErrorData. Objects are documented in the API Reference.

See Example 3: Handling a database move or credential expiry to show how it can be useful to identify and handle errors.

Authentication

Authentication is performed to obtain a session token (credentials). This token then confirms your identity for subsequent API operations. If the session expires, a new Authentication request must be made to get a new token. This approach encourages efficient use of Authentication requests, as shown in the Authentication example below.

Below you can see an example making an authentication request to “my.geotab.com” that completes successfully and then uses session to get a single device:

// Simple method to make calls to API
async function call(host, method, data) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
        const rpcData = JSON.stringify({
            "method": method,
            "params": data
        });

        xhr.addEventListener("readystatechange", function() {
            if (this.readyState === 4) {
                let jsonRpcResponse = JSON.parse(this.responseText);
                if (jsonRpcResponse.error) {
                    reject(new Error(`${jsonRpcResponse.error.data.type}: ${jsonRpcResponse.error.message}`));
                } else {
                    resolve(jsonRpcResponse.result);
                }
            }
        });

        xhr.open("POST", `https://${host}/apiv1`);
        xhr.setRequestHeader("content-type", "application/json");
        xhr.setRequestHeader("cache-control", "no-cache");

        xhr.send(rpcData);
    })
}
(async () => {
    const authenticateHost = "my.geotab.com";

    // Authenticate to get a token
    let loginResult = await call(
        authenticateHost,
        "Authenticate", {
            "database": "[database]",
            "userName": "[user@email.com]",
            "password": "[password]"
        });
    console.log(loginResult);

    // Use the correct host when making subsequent calls (for legacy compatibility)
    let callHost = loginResult.path === "ThisServer" ? authenticateHost : loginResult.path;

    // Call to get one device
    let devices = await call(
        callHost,
        "Get", {
            "typeName": "Device",
            "resultsLimit": 1,
            "credentials": loginResult.credentials
        });
    console.log(devices);
})();

Database, user and password must be set for successful authentication.

Example 1: Authenticate with valid credentials

In this example, an authentication request is made to my.geotab.com to log in to the database named database.

1. The Authenticate method is requested using the credentials provided.
2. The response from the server contains two important properties — path and credentials.

The path will either contain the URL of a server, or the string value ThisServer. Since the database is on my.geotab.com, it returns ThisServer. This means that the path is correct.

The credentials object contains the username, database and session ID. This object is required for all subsequent requests to the server.

1. Since the authentication method confirmed the path is correct, other methods can be used as well. For example, you can mak a request to Get devices from my.geotab.com. Pass the credentials object with the call to Get device.
2. The Get result is returned with one device.

Example 2: Requests with missing databases or with expiring credentials

The examples above demonstrate how to authenticate to get a token and make a call to Get devices. However, there are two additional scenarios to consider:

1. The credentials provided to Authenticate method are invalid.
2. The token has eventually expired.

In these scenarios, the API request will fail returning the JSON-RPC error similar to below:

{
    "error":{
        "code":-32000,
        "data":{
            "id":"5531c760-4ff7-485c-bb47-b6ed509b76d6",
            "type":"InvalidUserException",
            "requestIndex":0
        },
        "message":"Incorrect login credentials"
    },
    "jsonrpc":"2.0"
}

If the error contains an object with type InvalidUserException, the authentication failed or the authentication process must be repeated to obtain a fresh token.

HTTP Compression

The MyGeotab API supports brotli, gzip and deflate compression. To use either of these compression methods, include the HTTP header for “Accept-Encoding”. For example:

Accept-Encoding: brotli, gzip, deflate

If you are using an API client (.Net, JavaScript, Nodejs, etc.), the header is enabled automatically.

Limits

At Geotab, we work hard to create an open and flexible API that encourages creativity and innovation. We do this by providing tools to create powerful applications, integrations, and Add-ins, while maintaining overall system health and quality. Result and rate limits are intended to encourage API developers to use appropriate APIs for their use cases, and to safeguard against unbounded requests.

API Rate limits

API rate limits are restrictions imposed on the number of requests a client can make to an API within a specified time period. These limits are in place to prevent abuse, ensure fair usage, and maintain the overall performance and reliability of the API.

How Rate Limits Work

Limits: The number of requests users are allowed to make within a specific time window.

Period: The time window where the limits are going to be applied (e.g., 100 requests per minute).

Status: Indicates whether the rule is active or not. Possible status are:

• Active: The rule is active and if the limit is exceeded, further requests are going to be rejected;
• Coming soon: The rule is in place, all the headers are going to be present but still, it is not going to block calls that exceed the limit. This a time frame that users have to adapt their integration to work with the rate limit rule.

OverLimitException

When a rate limit is exceeded, an OverLimitException error is returned. A header (Retry-After) is also set with time remaining for the limit to reset.

Header Example

Retry-After: 58

Example

{
    "error": {
        "message": "API calls quota exceeded. Maximum admitted 10 per 1m.",
        "code": -32000,
        "data": {
            "id": "b83dc64f-3976-4b35-8e32-c55b3a4adc2f",
            "type": "OverLimitException"
        }
    },
    "jsonrpc": "2.0"
}

Headers

If a rate limit is applied to an API, with a successful JSON-RPC response, headers are set with rate limit information:

• X-Rate-Limit-Limit: the rate limit period (eg. 1s, 1m, 12h, 1d)
• X-Rate-Limit-Remaining: number of request remaining
• X-Rate-Limit-Reset: UTC date time (ISO 8601) when the limits resets

Example

X-Rate-Limit-Limit: 1m
X-Rate-Limit-Remaining: 8
X-Rate-Limit-Reset: 2019-04-26T16:13:11.9440478Z

Result Limits

GetFeed

GetFeed is limited to 50,000 records returned in a single request.

For legacy compatibility, GetFeed does not generate an exception when the limit provided is over 50,000. Rather, it implicitly limits results to 50,000 records.

Get

The entities listed below have Get limits of 50,000 results:

• AnnotationLog
• DVIRLog
• TrailerAttachment
• IoxAddOn
• CustomData
• BinaryData

Other entities will have Get limits of 50,000 results in the future, along with a new parameter for pagination when the number of results exceed such limits. For easier transition to the future format, it’s recommended that you pass in a 50,000 resultsLimit in the Get call, along with your own way to paginate (e.g. using timestamp).

OverLimitException

To ensure your application doesn’t think it has every result that matches the search criteria, when in reality there are more, an error result (OverLimitException) may be returned in these scenarios:

• If an API call is made with no results limit, one will be implicitly applied to the request on the server side.
• If the results are of the limit, an error result will be returned.
• If a request is made with a result limit higher than the imposed limit.
• A multicall child request limit is exceeded.
• No error will be returned if the provided rate limit matches the imposed limit, and the results match that limit.

Example

{
 "error": {
  "message": "Supplied results limit (50001) exceeds maximum limit (50000).",
  "code": -32000,
  "data": {
   "id": "16526e19-06b9-4a4a-b2a3-c1dbc0144cd8",
   "type": "OverLimitException"
  }
 },
 "jsonrpc": "2.0"
}

Working with dates

When exchanging dates as parameters to API methods, you must ensure that they are formatted properly as an ISO 8601 string (format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffZ). In addition, all dates will have to first be converted to UTC in order to ensure time zone information and daylight savings times are accounted for correctly.

Unit of measure

As a general rule, MyGeotab uses the metric system for values such as speed (km/h) and distance (m). For example, if you queried the odometer reading for a vehicle, the value would be returned in meters or if you retrieved the current speed of a vehicle it would be in km/h. It does not matter in which region in the world the vehicle or user of MyGeotab system is located — we always return the values in metric.A simple conversion can be applied to these values should you wish to work in imperial units or other customized units instead.

Please note that MyGeotab also records various other status data (e.g. engine data) from the vehicle and these values can be in various units of measure. The units of measure are not provided by Geotab in all cases. Refer to the applicable SAE standard of the specific code for the associated unit of measure.

Entities

All objects in the MyGeotab system are called entities. Entities have an ID property that is used to uniquely identify that object in the database. The ID is an opaque string value that uniquely identifies the entity and no assumption about the format or length of this ID value should be made when comparing or storing the values.

ID

An ID is used to uniquely reference entities in the API. IDs are represented by opaque strings. Generally the contents of the IDs are not significant for the user. Building logic around the value of the string should be avoided — unless it is a system ID (see the examples below).

Example 4

In this example, a vehicle in the system and its ID value will be examined. Here is a partial JSON representation of a device object:

{
    "id": "b0a46",
    "name": "007 - Aston Martin",
    "serialNumber": "GTA9000003EA",
    "deviceType": "GO6",
    "vehicleIdentificationNumber": "1002"
}

Note the “id” property with value “b0a46”. This is the unique identifier for the device (vehicle) with description “007 - Aston Martin”.

To find Trips for this vehicle all of the properties of the device do not have to be passed to the Get method. Instead, only the ID property of the device object is required. Below is an example of a valid parameter object (TripSearch) for passing into Get method. The deviceSearch with the ID property set to the value “b0a46” (as indicated in the example above) is passed.

{
  "typeName":"Trip",
  "search" : {
    "deviceSearch" : {
      "id" : "b0a46"
    }
  }
}

Calling the Get method with the parameter defined above will return all trips for the vehicle “007 - Aston Martin”.

Example 5

There are certain IDs that are predefined for system entities. For example the group that has been defined as the root group of all user groups, and called the CompanyGroup, will have an ID of “CompanyGroupId” rather than other characters (such as “b0a46” above). For example:

{
    "id": "CompanyGroupId",
    "name": "The Company Group",
    "children": [..]
}

If the system entities do not have any properties then they are specified as strings with their ID’s name. For example the source “Obd” will be identified as “SourceObdId”.

{
    "code": "738960445",
    "engineType": {
        "id": "b2715",
    },
    "source": "SourceObdId"
}

Building block approach

The results of a call to our API will only contain literal values and the identities of contained objects — not the actual fully populated child objects. This provides a predictable system that efficiently serializes objects to JSON and back. Additional lookups of the nested objects will be required to retrieve additional properties of the objects.

For example, an engine status data record has a device property. If 1000 engine status data records are retrieved for a device, the status data’s device property will only contain the ID of the device. An additional retrieval for the devices object will be required to obtain the status data records. This approach has several benefits:

• Saves bytes over the wire
• Reduces request time
• Avoids redundant copies of entities
• More flexible since the child objects may not always be required

In the example below it can be seen how, by creating a dictionary of devices where the key is the device ID and the value is the device object, devices can be easily “stitched” into the status data records:

var statusDatas = [{
        "id": "a1",
        "device": {
            "id": "b1"
        },
        "data": 0.002,
    ...
    },{
        "id": "a2",
        "device": {
            "id": "b1"
        },
        "data": 1.05,
    ...
    }
];

var deviceLookup = {
    "b1": {
        "id": "b1",
        "name": "Device 1",
        ...
    }
};

statusDatas[i].device = deviceLookup[statusDatas[i].device.id];

Depending on the process, for some entities like diagnostics, it may be desirable to maintain a local cache from which the status/fault data can be populated. In this case it will be necessary to refresh the cache when the cache is missing the required entity making an API call. This will allow the API to get the required entity and add it to the local cache. An example of maintaining a diagnostic cache would occur when consuming a feed of data from the API. An example of this process is included in both the .Net and JavaScript DataFeed examples.

PropertySelector BETA

PropertySelector is a new optional parameter that can be used with the Get and GetFeed methods to selectively include or exclude specific properties for entity type requested. This provides a mechanism to reduce the amount of data sent over the wire and can significantly reduce call times.

Supported Types

A limited set of objects have support for use with property selector in the beta version. These objects tend to have many properties and would provide the most benefit to reducing size over the wire.

Examples

A simple example of this can be illustrated by using the property selector with Device. The Device object can have many properties which may not be useful to all use-cases. For example, if I have an add-in to display a list of 500 devices by name. We only want our Device objects to have the properties Name and Id, so we set our PropertySelector object like so:

Javascript

Request

api.call("Get", {
  "typeName": "Device",
  "propertySelector":
  {
      fields: ["id", "name"],
      isIncluded: true
  },
  "resultsLimit": 500
}, function(result) {
  console.log("Done: ", result);
}, function(e) {
  console.error("Failed:", e);
});

Response

[
    {
        "name": "Work Truck 10",
        "id": "b1"
    },
    {
        "name": "Delivery Van 6",
        "id": "b2"
    }
]

In our example, making this call using the property selector results in the total JSON size over the wire of 5.4 kB and time of 45 ms.

Making the same call, without property selector (returning all properties) results in 41.8 kB of JSON sent over the wire and a round trip time of 320 ms.

C# Example

var results = await api.CallAsync<List<Device>>(
  "Get",
  typeof(Device),
  new
  {
    propertySelector = new PropertySelector
    {
        Fields = new List<string>
        {
          nameof(Device.Name),
          nameof(Device.Id)
        },
        IsIncluded = true
    },
    resultsLimit = 500
  });

List of Supported Entities

Below is a list of entities that support the PropertySelector functionality.

PropertySelector FAQ

Can I combine property selector and search?

Yes. PropertySelector and Search work independently of each other and can be used together in the same request.

MultiCall

A MultiCall is a way to make several API calls against a server with a single HTTP request. This eliminates potentially expensive round trip costs.

Why use a MultiCall?

Making an HTTP request over a network has overhead. This can be in the form of Network overhead, the round trip time to send and receive data over the network and HTTP overhead, the HTTP request and response headers. A MultiCall can be used to reduce amount of overhead in situations where many small requests need to be made to a server.

For example, if we make a request to get the count of devices. The request would be constructed in a format similar to:

{
 "method": "GetCountOf",
 "params": {
  "typeName": "Device",
  "credentials": {
   "database": "demo",
   "sessionId": "xxx",
   "userName": "bob@geotab.com"
  }
 }
}

Response:

{
 "result": 2340,
 "jsonrpc": "2.0"
}

Let’s assume that it takes 100 milliseconds for this call round trip (the time from sending request to receiving the response), including 40 milliseconds to send the request, 20 ms to process the data on the server, and 40 ms for the response to be returned. Google’s SPDY research project white paper states that “typical header sizes of 700-800 bytes is common”. Based on this assumption, we pay a 750 byte cost when making a request. From the example, there would be 80 ms of network overhead and 750 bytes of HTTP overhead, this is accepted as the “cost of doing business” when making a request over a network.

Taking the previous assumptions, what would the overhead be for making 1000 requests for road max speeds? When individual calls are made to the server for 1000 addresses; the base (minimum) HTTP and Network overhead is required for each of these calls. This would result in 80 seconds (80,000 milliseconds) of network overhead and 0.72 MB (750,000 bytes) in headers just going to and from the server. It can be clearly seen that a great deal of overhead can be generated by making small but repeated requests.

By using a MultiCall, the network and HTTP overhead remains at the cost of a single request. This brings the overhead back down to our original 80 milliseconds and 750 bytes. The server processes each request and returns an Array of results when complete.

The above illustration is an extreme example to demonstrate the benefits of using a MultiCall. A MultiCall can (and should) be used to make short running calls of 2 or more requests more efficient than individual calls.

Basic implementation

Making a MultiCall is simple, use the method “ExecuteMultiCall” with the parameter “calls” of JSON type Array. Each call should be formatted as an Object with property “method” of type string with the method name as its value and a property “params” of type Object with the method parameters as its properties. The parent “params” object will also need to contain the user credentials if they are required for at least one of the child methods being called. It is not necessary to include credentials with each child call.

{
  "method": "ExecuteMultiCall",
  "params": {
  "calls": [
   {
    "method": "GetCountOf",
    "params": {
     "typeName": "Device"
    }
   },
   {
    "method": "GetCountOf",
    "params": {
     "typeName": "User"
    }
   }
  ],
  "credentials": {
   "database": "demo",
   "sessionId": "xxx",
   "userName": "bob@geotab.com"
  }
 }
}

Response:

{
 "result": [
  2340,
  2022
 ],
 "jsonrpc": "2.0"
}

Errors

In a MultiCall, each request is run on the server synchronously. If one fails, the error results are returned immediately and unreached calls are not run. The error results includes the index of the call in the array that the exception occurred.

To illustrate, let’s assume an array of calls (api.multicall([call-a, call-b, call-c])) where call-b is formatted incorrectly.

var calls = [
  call-a, // ran successfully
  call-b, // error occurred, throw and return error
  call-c  // never ran
]

Below is an example of the error result. The requestIndex property contains the index of the call that failed.

results = {
    "error": {
        "message": "The method 'Foobar' could not be found. Verify the method name and ensure all method parameters are included.",
        "code": -32601,
        "data": {
            "id":"2901ac83-0d7f-41a1-9cca-fd4a68e77ae7",
            "type":"MissingMethodException",
            "requestIndex": 1
        }
    },
    "jsonrpc":"2.0"
}

Alternatively, a successful MultiCall would look similar to:

calls = [
    call-a, // ran successfully
    call-b, // ran successfully
    call-c  // ran successfully
]
results = {
    "results": [
        [...],
        [...],
        [...]
    ]
}

API client support

All of the API clients have native support for making multi-calls. Below are examples of making multi-calls using the Javascript and .Net wrappers:

JavaScript API multi-call example:

var calls = [
    ["Get", { typeName: "Diagnostic" }],
    ["Get", { typeName: "Source", search: {id: "SourceGeotabGoId"}}],
    ["Get", { typeName: "Controller" }]
];

api.multiCall(calls, function (results) {
    var diagnostics = results[0];
    var sources = results[1];
    var controllers = results[2];
}, function (errorString) {
    alert(errorString);
});

.Net nuget package multi-call example:

var calls = new object[] {
    new object[] { "Get", typeof(Diagnostic), typeof(List<Diagnostic>)},
    new object[] { "Get", typeof(Source), new { search = new SourceSearch { Id = KnownId.SourceGeotabGoId } }, typeof(List<Source>)},
    new object[] { "Get", typeof(Controller), typeof(List<Controller>)},
};

var results = api.MultiCall(calls);

var diagnostics = (List<Diagnostic>)results[0];
var sources = (List<Source>)results[1];
var controllers = (List<Controller>)results[2];

MultiCall FAQ

Can I use a search in a multicall?

Yes, it is possible to use a search in a multicall.

When shouldn’t I use a multicall?

1. If you need to make a few requests that are long running and return a large amount of data, it may be preferable to make the requests singularly instead of running one multicall request that continues for a very long time before completion. When the connection is held open for a long period of time, you become increasingly susceptible to network interference that can terminate the request.
2. Manipulating data (Add, Set, Remove) via a multicall is not recommended. A multicall is not transactional. Therefore, if call 1 of 3 to Add succeeds and call 2 of 3 fails, call 3 of 3 will not be executed and call 1 would not be rolled back.

How many request can I put in a multicall?

For optimal performance, we advise limiting to 100 nested requests.

This is relevant when processing requests large response sizes, for instance, Getover an extended period. Similarly, using chunking to manage high-volume requests improves process control and optimizes response management.

That being said, the system does not enforce a hard limit on the number of requests in a multicall at this point.

What if the call doesn’t return a result?

The index in the array of results will have a null value.