API Recipes

Using our APIs enable application developers and data engineers to seamlessly integrate the Vectara semantic search capabilities into your applications. After you review this section, you can check out our API Playground to experiment with Vectara's REST APIs directly from your browser!

The Vectara Console and our APIs work hand-in-hand as part of the app development process. For example, a builder uses this following workflow:

Fine-tune a query's lambda and filters until the answer quality is just right.
Copy the request directly from the Vectara Console and paste it into your IDE.
Copy the customer ID and API key from the Vectara Console to further configure the request.
Test out the software and then verify that requests are hitting your corpus by checking the querying graph on the Overview tab.

Let’s get you started with using the Vectara APIs so that you can perform queries on some data.

What you will learn

We'll show you several example API recipes that include queries with some values in the parameters, and then display example responses:

To issue the types of API calls in these recipes, you typically need the following information that you can get from the Vectara Console UI:

Customer ID
Corpus ID
API Key

Search for answers in a corpus

In this example, you have a corpus with uploaded data from an Employee Handbook. Now you want to ask, “How much PTO is offered to employees each year?”

To issue the cURL command in the example, you input the following field values:

customer_id and customerId = 123456789
x-api-key = abc_12345defg67890hij09876
corpus_id = 1
query = How much PTO is offered to employees each year?

Example cURL command

This example queries the corpus with the question about annual PTO.

curl -L -X POST 'https://api.vectara.io/v1/query' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'customer-id: 123456789' \
-H 'x-api-key: abc_12345defg67890hij09876' \
--data-raw '{
  "query": [
    {
      "query": "How much PTO is offered to employees each year?",
      "start": 0,
      
      // 20 results per page
      
      "numResults": 20,
      "contextConfig": {
        "charsBefore": 30,
        "charsAfter": 30,
        "sentencesBefore": 3,
        "sentencesAfter": 3,
        "startTag": "<b>",
        "endTag": "</b>"
      },
      "corpusKey": [
        {
          "customerId": 123456789,
          "corpusId": 1,
          "semantics": "DEFAULT",
          "dim": [],
          "metadataFilter": "part.lang = '\''eng'\''",
          "lexicalInterpolationConfig": {
            
            // This value lets you balance neural search and keyword search
            // You can specify 0.0 to 1.0, where 1.0 is exact keyword matching
            "lambda": 0.1
          }
        }
      ],
      "rerankingConfig": {
        "rerankerId": 272725717
      },
      "summary": [
        {

          // This value selects the summarizer. In this case it is using
          // ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo. Scale users can use the 1.3.0 summarizer
          // which is ChatGPT 4.0
          "summarizerPromptName": "vectara-summary-ext-v1.2.0",
          "responseLang": "en"

          // This value tell the summarizer to use 5 results
          // Experiment setting this value from 5-10
          "maxSummarizedResults": 5,
          
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}'

Example JSON response

Let’s take a closer look at the first response:

{
  "responseSet": [
    {
      "response": [
        {
          "text": "Employee Handbook PTO is 20 days a year for all new employees. 
          <b>Employees earn more vacation days per year of service up to 5 extra 
          days.</b> Example: Once you begin your 5th year, you now have 25 
          vacation days.",
          "score": 4.30505,
          "metadata": [
            {
              "name": "lang",
              "value": "eng"
            },
            {
              "name": "section",
              "value": "1"
            },
            {
              "name": "offset",
              "value": "63"
            },
            {
              "name": "len",
              "value": "73"
            }
          ],
          "documentIndex": 0,
          "corpusKey": {
            "customerId": 1,
            "corpusId": 123456789,
            "semantics": "DEFAULT",
            "dim": [],
            "metadataFilter": "",
            "lexicalInterpolationConfig": null
          },
          "resultOffset": 66,
          "resultLength": 73
        },
      // More results....

The example API call provided the following response:

"Employee Handbook PTO is 20 days a year for all new employees. Employees earn more vacation days per year of service up to 5 extra days. Example: Once you begin your 5th year, you now have 25 vacation days."

The result answers the question and returns additional details about the query, such as the language, section, and offset.

Let's take a look at some other API calls that you can make.

Upload a file to the corpus

If you want to add a file to an existing corpus, you can upload a new file with a simple command.

You need to input the following information:

customer_id
x-api-key
corpus_id
File name
Path to the file

Example cURL command

In this example command, you have a local doc.rtf file that you want to upload to corpus 1, which is corpus_id = 1.

curl -L -X POST 'https://api.vectara.io/v1/upload?c=123456789&o=1&d=true' \
-H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'x-api-key: abc_12345defg67890hij09876' \
-F 'file=@"//Users/username/Documents/tmp/doc.rtf"'

Example JSON response

The file uploads successfully and you get the following response:

{"response":{
  "status": {
  },
  "quotaConsumed": {
    "numChars": "60",
    "numMetadataChars": "148"
  }
  },"document":{
  "documentId": "doc.rtf",
  "metadataJson": "{\"X-TIKA:Parsed-By\":\"org.apache.tika.parser.microsoft.rtf.RTFParser\",\"Content-Type\":\"application/rtf\"}",
  "section": [{
    "id": 1,
    "text": "Simple test doc\n\nLorem ipsum \nLorem ipsum \nLorem ipsum \n "
   }]
  }} 

Issue a query and return a specific number of results

In this query, you want to search for the term "technology" and then return only the first 5 results.

Example cURL command

curl -L -X POST 'https://api.vectara.io/v1/query' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Accept: application/json' \
-H 'customer-id: 123456789' \
-H 'x-api-key: abc_12345defg67890hij09876' \
--data-raw '{
  "query": [
    {
      "query": "Technology",
      "start": 0,
      "numResults": 5,
      "corpusKey": [
        {
          "customerId": 123456789,
          "corpusId": 2,
          "semantics": "DEFAULT",
          "dim": [
            {
              "name": "string",
              "weight": 0
            }
          ],
          "metadataFilter": "part.lang = '\''eng'\''",
          "lexicalInterpolationConfig": {
            "lambda": 0
          }
        }
      ],
      "rerankingConfig": {
        "rerankerId": 272725717
      },
      "summary": [
        {
          "summarizerPromptName": "vectara-summary-ext-v1.2.0",
          "responseLang": "en"
          "maxSummarizedResults": 5,
          
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}'

Example JSON response with 5 results

{
  "status": "OK",
  "results": [
    {
      "text": "The future of technology is AI.",
      "score": 0.98,
      "documentIndex": 1
      // More results....
    },
    {
      "text": "Technology is evolving rapidly.",
      "score": 0.95,
      "documentIndex": 2
    },
    {
      "text": "Generative AI technology is revolutionary.",
      "score": 0.92,
      "documentIndex": 3
    },
    {
      "text": "Technology has its pros and cons.",
      "score": 0.90,
      "documentIndex": 4
    },
    {
      "text": "The role of technology in modern society.",
      "score": 0.88,
      "documentIndex": 5
    }
  ]
}

List all corpora and delete a specific corpus

In this example, you want to list all corpora that contain the word "handbook" in the name.

Execute the following curl command to list the corpora:

curl -L -X POST 'https://api.vectara.io/v1/list-corpora' \
   -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   -H 'Accept: application/json' \
   -H 'customer-id: 123456789' \
   -H 'Authorization: Bearer zwt_bearer_token' \
   --data-raw '{
"numResults": 8,
"filter": "handbook"
}'

You get the following response:

{
 "corpus": [
   {
   "id": 6,
   "name": "Employee handbook",
   "description": "Employee guidelines from HR",
   "enabled": true,
   "swapQenc": false,
   "swapIenc": false,
   "textless": false,
   "encrypted": false,
   "encoderId": "0",
   "metadataMaxBytes": 0,
   "faissIndexType": "",
   "customDimensions": [],
   "filterAttributes": []
   },
  {
   "id": 11,
   "name": "Employee Handbook",
   "description": "Pet Policy",
   "enabled": true,
   "swapQenc": false,
   "swapIenc": false,
   "textless": false,
   "encrypted": false,
   "encoderId": "0",
   "metadataMaxBytes": 0,
   "faissIndexType": "",
   "customDimensions": [],
   "filterAttributes": []
  },
  {
   "id": 13,
   "name": "2022 handbook",
   "description": "",
   "enabled": true,
   "swapQenc": false,
   "swapIenc": false,
   "textless": false,
   "encrypted": false,
   "encoderId": "0",
   "metadataMaxBytes": 0,
   "faissIndexType": "",
   "customDimensions": [],
   "filterAttributes": []
 }
],
"pageKey": "",
"status": null
}

Execute the following curl command to delete a specific corpus with corpus_id = 13.

curl -L -X POST 'https://api.vectara.io/v1/delete-corpus' \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -H 'Accept: application/json' \
    -H 'customer-id: 123456789' \
    -H 'Authorization: Bearer zwt_bearer_token' \
   --data-raw '{
"corpusId": 13
}'

You get the following response:

{
  "status": {
   "code": "OK",
   "statusDetail": "Corpus Deleted",
   "cause": null
 }
}

Execute the curl command from Step 1 again and the corpus you deleted no longer exists.

This API recipes section provided a variety of query examples that you can leverage as you start building with Vectara.

What you will learn​

Search for answers in a corpus​

Example cURL command​

Example JSON response​

Upload a file to the corpus​

Example cURL command​

Example JSON response​

Issue a query and return a specific number of results​

Example cURL command​

Example JSON response with 5 results​

List all corpora and delete a specific corpus​

What you will learn

Search for answers in a corpus

Example cURL command

Example JSON response

Upload a file to the corpus

Example cURL command

Example JSON response

Issue a query and return a specific number of results

Example cURL command

Example JSON response with 5 results

List all corpora and delete a specific corpus