Quickstart

A quick introduction to building with Okra

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Overview

Use our Sandbox environment to build your integration. We offer dummy data that mimics real-world use cases, which means you can test out all the endpoints, use the widget, and implement webhooks - just the same as with real-world data!

All you need to get started with the Sandbox environment is to get your API keys. We really recommend that you start creating your integration in this environment.

API Keys
client_token - A unique identifier used to integrate the Okra widget
Public API Key - Gives you access to data in real-time, used with client token during widget implementation.
Secret Key - A unique set of string of numbers or letters used only during API implementation
Environment
Sandbox - Get started with test credentials that mimic that of real-world use cases
Production - Launch your app with live credentials.

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Got stuck?
If you get stuck at any point in the Quickstart, help is just a click away! Ask other developers in our Slack developer community.

Switching to production

After you have tested your integration in the Sandbox environment and are ready to go live, you'll need to request access to our Production environment. After you request access, our Sales Team will get in contact with you to schedule a meeting just to make sure your needs are satisfied, and then you'll just need to go through a process with one of our engineers to make sure that your integration is running optimally. Before meeting with one of our engineers, follow our Integration checklist.

Once your integration is certified, all you'll need to do is:

  • Request Production API keys (and change your Sandbox API keys in the code to these new ones)
  • Change the base URL that you make requests to from api.okra.ng/v2/sandbox/ to api.okra.ng/v2/.
  • If you're using webhooks, make sure to set a Production URL for your webhooks.

Get Started in 5 minutes

In this guide, we'll get you set up with API keys, and a Postman collection, and run you through a simple flow with our API so you can see how easy it is to access a whole world of information!

Create an Okra Account

  1. Go to the "Create your account" page here(https://dash.okra.ng/register) and fill in the required fields.
  1. Check your inbox for an email from us and confirm your email address.
    The subject line will be: [Okra] Please Confirm Your E-mail Address

✳️ Done! Once you click on the link in the email, you'll be redirected to the Okra dashboard! In the dashboard, you can set up your account, check your activity logs, and find your Okra API keys.

Making API request

With your API keys in hand, let's get you up and running with Postman 📬.

We've created a public Postman workspace so that you can quickly and easily start testing what data you can get using Okra. In this article, you'll learn how to install and configure our collection.

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Make sure you've installed the Postman App for Windows, Mac, or Chrome and have logged into your Postman account.


Fork the Okra API Collection

To use Okra API collection:

  1. Go to Okra's Postman workspace and click Watch. This way, if we ever make a change to the collection, you'll be automatically notified and you'll be able to pull the changes into your fork.
  2. Click on Fork to fork the collection into your own private workspace.

✳️ Done! Let's quickly configure Postman so that you can easily use our API.


Configure Postman

Our Postman collections make use of environment variables to customize the requests that are sent. You can read more about environments in Postman's setting up an environment with variables article.

To create your environment variables:

  1. In Postman, click the eye icon.
  2. In the Environment section, click Add.

  1. Name your Environment, for example, Okra Sandbox.
  2. Add the following environment variables:
    • API_KEY: your sandbox API Key
    • secret: your sandbox secret(token).
    • baseUrl: <https://api.okra.ng/v2/sandbox>.

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Make sure that your ApiKey, secret, and baseUrl are properly stored as the initial value AND current value. This is important to prevent potential errors

  1. Rename the environment to Okra Sandbox
  2. Click Save

✳️ Awesome! But before we go on, let's make sure that everything is working just fine with a simple call.


Test in postman

Just to make sure you've set everything up correctly, let's see that you can list all the banks in our Sandbox environment.

  1. Make sure that you select your Okra Sandbox environment.
  2. In the Okra API folder, select Bank → GET List.
  3. Click Send.

If everything is correctly set up, you should see a whole host of banks appear!

Linking a bank account

Let's see how you can link a bank account using the sandbox environment and with test credentials.
The steps towards linking your bank account using Okra involve;

1. Grab your API Keys from your dashboard

2. Open your Code Editor

3. Create a simple index.html file

4. Copy the snippet below and paste it into your index.html file

5. Preview the page in your browser

6. Use the test credentials to link your account

Username - Jude123
Password - Lily

#Bank - ALAT
#LoginMethod - Internet Banking

You can generate your own test credentials on the dashboard or via the API reference.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Linking a bank account</title>
  </head>
    <body onload="buildWithOptions()" style="background-color:#fff;height:100vh">
      <script src="https://cdn.okra.ng/v2/bundle.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript">
          function buildWithOptions(){
              Okra.buildWithOptions({
                name: 'Sandbox Test',
                env: 'production-sandbox',
                key: '<your-secret-key-in-your-dashboard>',
                token: '<your-client-token-in-your-dashboard>',
                products: ['auth', 'identity', 'balance', 'transactions' ],
                onSuccess: function(data){
                      console.log('data', data)
                  },
                onClose: function(){
                      console.log('close widget')
                  }
              })
          }
      </script>
    </body>
</html>
OptionsDescription
NameYour company name of that of the app
envThe environment, in our case it's production-sandbox since we're on the sandbox environment
public API keyThe public key in your dashboard
tokenThe client token in your dashboard
productsIt involves an array of products you want to retrieve from a customer bank account after linking.
EventsonSuccess and onClose are the events during widget implementation, to keep it simple, we console.log the data from the widget.

Next Steps

Congratulations ✳️, you have completed the Okra Quickstart! From here, we invite you to modify the Quickstart code in order to get more practice with the Okra API.

From here, the next directions you can go in now include: