`json` parameter in the request API

Question

The parameters in the API are confusing, especially the depth + the json paramter.

I have seen these three combinations and my question is, which variant is wrong and which is not.

I can't figure out from the results what exactly is going on as most of my queries don't yet return what I'm expecting, so I want to get this clear first. I think Civi has some kind of fallback magic as in some requests I get undefined_fields but it returns correct results.

---

Entity related stuff goes into the root level, as seen in different (inofficial) files:

{
  'api_key': '...',
  'activity.id': 123,
  'json': {
    'options': {
      'limit': 1
    }
  }
}

---

The API Explorer suggest entity/attribute related stuff goes inside the json parameter:

{
  'api_key': '...',
  'json': {
    'activity.id': 123,
    'options': {
      'limit': 1
    }
  }
}

---

Variant without nesting and json beeing integer as seen on https://docs.civicrm.org/dev/en/latest/api/usage/ :

{
  'api_key': '...',
  'activity.id': 123,
  'limit': 1
  'json': 1
}

P.S I'm accessing the REST API via HTTP calls to /sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/rest.php.

Answer 1

The last one look OK to me, the JSON parameter AFAIK is there just so I get the results in JSON format rather than XML format.

But are you doing your api call with the REST, in Javascript or in PHP? And did you check the API chapter in the Developer Guide? It can be found here: https://docs.civicrm.org/dev/en/latest/api/

Answer 2

It looks like you're doing this via REST. The API explorer gives this:

https://dmaster.demo.civicrm.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/rest.php?entity=Activity&action=get&api_key=userkey&key=sitekey&json={"sequential":1,"id":123,"options":{"limit":1}}

If you explain more about what you are trying to do you may get better answers.