Quick Start

1. Get Your Credentials

These credentials:

Authenticate your requests
Track job attribution
Are different for staging vs production

⚠️
Keep your secret secure. If compromised, contact us immediately.

2. Environments

Environment	Base URL
Staging	`https://api.staging.checkatrade.com/v1/affiliate-job`
Production	`https://api.checkatrade.com/v1/affiliate-job`

Use staging to test your integration—jobs won't reach real tradespeople.

3.Testing in Production

Requests sent in Production will go to real trades.

To test your requests are properly constructed and credentials working in the production environment, please use the below endpoints:

/verify
/verify/jobs/with-attachments

An example request can be seen below in section #5. Please also see Submit a Job with Images for further examples.

4. Generate your signature

All requests require HMAC-SHA256 signature authentication. This ensures requests genuinely come from you and haven't been tampered with.

How It Works

Generate a timestamp
Create a signature by hashing the timestamp with your secret
Send both in your request headers

5. Make Your First Request

curl -X POST "https://api.staging.checkatrade.com/v1/affiliate-job/verify" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Date: $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)" \
  -H "Authorization: Signature keyId=\"YOUR_KEY\",algorithm=\"hmac-sha256\",signature=\"YOUR_SIGNATURE\"" \
  -d '{
    "categoryId": 20,
    "description": "My bathroom tap is leaking and needs replacing",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "phone": "+447123456789",
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Smith",
    "postcode": "SW1A 1AA"
  }'