Generate an API Client

What You’ll Build

A typed SheerID API client generated directly from our OpenAPI specification, then used to start a verification and check its status — without hand-writing a single HTTP call or request/response type.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (to run the generator via npx) or any environment that can run OpenAPI Generator.
• An API access token — see Authentication and API Tokens.
• A published verification program and its programId.

Why generate a client

SheerID publishes a machine-readable OpenAPI specification. Code-generation tools turn that spec into a ready-to-use client library in your language, giving you:

• Typed models for every request and response — your editor autocompletes fields and your compiler catches mistakes.
• Less boilerplate — no hand-written fetch/axios calls, URL building, or JSON shapes.
• Easy upgrades — regenerate when the API changes and let the compiler flag what moved.

Where the spec lives

Worked example: a TypeScript client

This uses OpenAPI Generator to produce a typescript-axios client.

1. Generate the client

npx @openapitools/openapi-generator-cli generate \
  -i https://services.sheerid.com/rest/v2/swagger.yaml \
  -g typescript-axios \
  -o ./sheerid-client

This writes a typed client into ./sheerid-client. SheerID’s verification endpoints are tagged verification, so the generator creates a VerificationApi class with one method per operation.

2. Install the runtime dependency

npm install axios

3. Start a verification and check its status

import { Configuration, VerificationApi } from "./sheerid-client";

// The base URL comes from the spec's servers entry: https://services.sheerid.com/rest/v2
// accessToken is sent as: Authorization: Bearer <token>
const config = new Configuration({
  accessToken: process.env.SHEERID_TOKEN,
});

const api = new VerificationApi(config);

// Start a student verification and submit personal info in one request.
// The exact body fields vary by verification type — see Required Fields in the Reference.
const { data } = await api.submitStudentVerificationWithProgramId("YOUR_PROGRAM_ID", {
  firstName: "Test",
  lastName: "User",
  email: "[email protected]",
  birthDate: "2000-01-01",
  organization: { id: 1234, name: "The University of Example" },
});

console.log(data.currentStep); // e.g. "success", "docUpload", "pending"

// Later, fetch the current state of that verification:
const status = await api.getVerificationStatus(data.verificationId);
console.log(status.data.currentStep);

Other languages and tools

The same spec generates clients in 50+ languages. Point any of these tools at https://services.sheerid.com/rest/v2/swagger.yaml:

Next Steps

• REST API quickstart — the end-to-end verification flow.
• Authentication — how to obtain and send a token.
• Errors — how to handle API errors and retries.