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Make an API Call to authenticated APIs

In this guide, you'll learn about Secrets in Buildel and find out how to enable the chat to make API calls to authenticated external APIs.

Prerequisites​

We'll be using the IMDb API to fetch movie details, so you'll need a RapidAPI key for authorization. To proceed, please visit RapidAPI and set up an account.

We strongly encourage you to follow along starting from our previous guide.

What Secrets are?​

In Buildel, you have access to a feature called secrets. This allows you to create a secure value that can later be used in blocks and other parts of your workflows.

How to create a Buildel Secret?​

If you've been following the guides from the start, you've already created a secret! In the Create first workflow guide, you added an OpenAI secret for authorization with OpenAI.

You can now check what secrets you already have in the Secrets tab in buildel.

As you can see, in the Secrets tab, you can manage your secrets. We have added a RapidAPI key for authorization with the previously mentioned external API.

How to use Secret in Api Call Tool?​

Let's return to our workflow, create an alias, and then make some adjustments.

Pass dynamic query parameter to url​

Instead of fetching data from the JSONPlaceholder API, we'll switch to a new URL https://imdb146.p.rapidapi.com/v1/find. This endpoint requires a query parameter with the name of the movie we are searching for.

Just like we passed the ID in the previous guide, we can pass the query parameter in the same manner!

Now, the chat block understands that the Api Call Tool requires a name parameter and will send it accordingly!

When we attempt to run our workflow, it doesn't work as expected. The chat indicates that it cannot retrieve information, which is accurate. RapidAPI requires us to send a X-RapidAPI-Key in the headers. Let's add that!

Pass secret to Api Call Tool headers​

Since we've already added the X-RapidAPI-Key to our Secrets, the only thing left is to inject this secret into the headers. We can do this in a very similar way to how we handled query parameters.

As you can see, by incorporating the secret into the headers, we've now got the chat functioning correctly!