Quickstart

Overview

This quickstart is a brief introduction to our data and APIs. Don’t worry if you’ve never used an API before, as with a little copy-and-paste magic we’ll get you up and running quickly. In just a few minutes, you will be retrieving and accessing real person and company data directly from our datasets.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Creating an Account (and Getting Your Free API Key)
2. Augmenting Existing Records with Our Person Enrichment API
3. Looking Up a Company Profile Using Our Company Enrichment API

API Introduction Video

Create an Account

In order to access our data, you will need an API key. You can get one by creating a free account at www.peopledatalabs.com/signup, clicking API Keys, and copying the Active Key.

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Warning!

This is your secret API key, so please keep it private, as we charge you credits based on usage associated with it. If for some reason you need a new API key, you can always generate one from the dashboard.

For more information on signing up for an API key and setting up package access, see our Self-Signup API Quickstart guide.

Augment Existing Records with the Person Enrichment API

Once you have your API key, you can look up a person profile from our Person Dataset using the Person Enrichment API.

Here’s a cURL command that you can copy and paste into your terminal:

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Before Running the Command:

Replace XXXX with your API key and hit enter to run the command.

API_KEY=XXXX
curl "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/person/enrich?api_key=${API_KEY}&pretty=True&profile=linkedin.com/in/seanthorne"

This is what happens when you run this command:

1. You send an API request through cURL for the profile associated with the following LinkedIn account: linkedin.com/in/seanthorne.
2. The Person Enrichment API finds the best matching profile record in our Person Dataset.
3. The API returns a JSON-formatted profile record in response with a 200 status, which indicates that a record was successfully found.

The result of running the above command should be the profile for Sean Thorne (the CEO of People Data Labs) from our Person Dataset. To see Sean's full profile that would be returned in the data object, check out our Example Person Record.

{
  "status": 200,
  "likelihood": 10,
  "data": {
    "id": "qEnOZ5Oh0poWnQ1luFBfVw_0000",
    "full_name": "sean thorne",
    ...
  }
}

A couple key points to note on profiles in our datasets:

• Every profile record in our datasets is returned as a JSON object.
• Profiles in our Person Dataset will contain information relating to the more than 140 fields in our Person Schema, which can enable a wide range of different use cases.

Try Looking Up Your Own Person Profile

You can also look up someone besides our venerable CEO. Copy the profile URL of your favorite person on LinkedIn (which could even be yourself). Use it to run the following command:

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Before Running the Command

1. Replace XXXX with your API key.
2. Replace YYYY with the LinkedIn URL that you want to “enrich.”

API_KEY=XXXX
LINKEDIN_URL=YYYY
curl "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/person/enrich?api_key=${API_KEY}&pretty=True&profile=${LINKEDIN_URL}"

This time you should see one of 2 results:

1. A profile from our Person Dataset containing all the information that we have associated with that LinkedIn URL (similar to what we got before.)
2. An error indicating that the profile could not be found in our dataset. If this happens, try picking a different LinkedIn profile to enrich.

In the above example, you're simply looking up profiles by their LinkedIn URL, but the Person Enrichment API supports lookups using a variety of different inputs, such as name, email, phone numbers, employer, locations and more. Feel free to dive deeper into the Person Enrichment API, but at this point you should have a basic understanding of the type of information contained within our Person Dataset.

Look Up a Company Profile Using the Company Enrichment API

Next, let’s look at some records in the Company Dataset.

Just as you used the Person Enrichment API to retrieve the profile of a specific person, you can use the Company Enrichment API to retrieve the profile of a specific company. Let’s retrieve the record for People Data Labs using our LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/company/peopledatalabs/

Here's the cURL command:

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Before Running the Command

Replace XXXX with your API key.

API_KEY=XXXX
curl "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/company/enrich?api_key=${API_KEY}&pretty=True&profile=linkedin.com/company/peopledatalabs"

This time you should get the following response. To see PDL's full profile that would be returned, check out our Example Company Record.

{
  "status": 200,
  "name": "people data labs",
  "id": "peopledatalabs",
  ...
  "likelihood": 6
}

As with records in our Person Dataset, company profiles in our Company Dataset are stored as JSON objects, and they contain information for the fields in our Company Schema.

Try Looking Up Another Company Profile

Next, try looking up another company profile. This time, find your favorite company on LinkedIn. For example, Google. Go to the company’s profile page and copy the URL.

As you should now be trying to get a feel for the type of data available within in the PDL datasets, try a few different LinkedIn URLs. Here are some examples:

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/amazon/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/apple/

Once you have chosen a LinkedIn URL, run the following command:

📘

Before Running the Command

1. Replace XXXX with your API key.
2. Replace YYYY with the Linkedin URL that you want to “enrich.”

API_KEY=XXXX
LINKEDIN_URL=YYYY
curl "https://api.peopledatalabs.com/v5/company/enrich?api_key=${API_KEY}&pretty=True&profile=${LINKEDIN_URL}"

In the response, you should see either:

• The full PDL company profile associated with the LinkedIn URL that you submitted.
• An error indicating that no matching record could be found, in which case you can try one of the example LinkedIn URLs listed above.

We encourage you to look up a number of company profiles to get a sense of the type of coverage and information that our datasets offer.

Wrapping Up

We have covered a lot with this quickstart. Here’s a recap:

• You created a PDL account and got a free API key, which you can use to access a variety of API endpoints.
• You used a simple cURL command to look up person profiles in our PDL dataset by LinkedIn URL (in the data world, we’d say that you “enriched” a profile using a LinkedIn URL).
• You learned how to use the Person Enrichment API to look up person profile records.
• You also learned how to use the Company Enrichment API to look up company profile records.
• You saw multiple examples of person and company profiles that you retrieved from our datasets.

Not bad for a few minutes of copying and pasting 😁.