Access reference documentation for the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API

Reference documentation for the Wowza Streaming Engine™ media server software REST API is available through the open-source OpenAPI (Swagger) 1.2 framework. Swagger presents the documentation, which describes every resource and operation in the API, on a single webpage represented using the JSON schema.

To use the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API reference documentation, you must enable the documentation server that comes with your Wowza Streaming Engine instance. Then you can download and view the content locally.

Configure the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API documentation server

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Wowza Streaming Engine includes a documentation server, or servlet, that provides the REST API reference documentation through a Swagger-based webpage. The documentation server is disabled by default. To use it, you must enable the servlet and disable servlet authentication in your instance's Server.xml file.

1. On the computer with Wowza Streaming Engine installed, go to [install-dir]/conf and open Server.xml file in a text editor.
2. Locate the DocumentationServerEnable property in the <RESTInterface> section and specify true, like this:

   <DocumentationServerEnable>true</DocumentationServerEnable>

Note: By default, the documentation server uses port 8089. To use a different port, change <DocumentationServerPort>8089</DocumentationServerPort> to <DocumentationServerPort>[port-number]</DocumentationServerPort>.

3. Locate the DocumentationServerAuthenticationMethod property and specify none, like this:

<DocumentationServerAuthenticationMethod>none</DocumentationServerAuthenticationMethod>

 

Note: The documentation server uses CORS headers. If you're using Wowza Streaming Engine 4.5.0 or later, CORS is enabled by default. If you're using Wowza Streaming Engine 4.3.0 or 4.4.x, you must enable CORS by adding the restUserHTTPHeaders property to the <RESTInterface>/<Properties> container element in the Server.xml file, like this:

<Properties>
    <Property>
        <Name>restUserHTTPHeaders</Name>
        <Value>Access-Control-Allow-Origin:*|Access-Control-Allow-Methods:OPTIONS,GET,PUT,DELETE,POST|Access-Control-Allow-Headers:Content-Type</Value>
    </Property>
</Properties>

For more information, see Add HTTP headers to Wowza Streaming Engine REST API responses.

Finally, to use the Try it out! buttons to execute queries from within Swagger, you must turn off API authentication. 

4. Locate the AuthenticationMethod property and specify none, like this:

<AuthenticationMethod>none</AuthenticationMethod>

 

Note: If you set the <AuthenticationMethod> to none, you're also disabling authentication for Wowza Streaming Manager and removing the ability to manage and configure the media server software using Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.

5. Save your changes and then restart Wowza Streaming Engine.

Download and view the documentation

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After you've configured Wowza Streaming Engine to use the documentation server, you can download and view the content.

Note: Wowza Streaming Engine must be running in order to open the Swagger doc.

1. Download the Swagger webpage and content.
2. Extract the zipped contents of the download to any location on your computer.
    
3. In your file system, navigate to the extracted content and open index.html in a web browser.
    
4. In the upper-right corner of the index.html webpage, enter the URL of the Wowza Streaming Engine server that has the REST API documentation servlet enabled, for example:
   
     http://[wowza-ip-address]:8089/api-docs
5. Click Explore.

Access the documentation server on a remote Wowza Streaming Engine instance

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1. On the computer that has the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API documentation you want to view, open Server.xml in a text editor.
2. Add the remote computer's IP address to the IPWhiteList property in the <RESTInterface> container element. For details on configuring the IPWhiteList property, see Connect to remote Streaming Engine from local Streaming Engine Manager.
3. Restart Wowza Streaming Engine.
4. On the computer where you've downloaded the Swagger content, open the index.html webpage and enter the URL of the Wowza Streaming Engine server that has the REST API documentation that you want to view using the format:

http://[wowza-ip-address]:8089/api-docs

More resources

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• Change the authentication method for the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API
• Query the Wowza Streaming Engine REST API
• Use Wowza Streaming Engine REST API reference documentation with Swagger Codegen
• Access Wowza Streaming Engine REST API reference documentation with Postman