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    Build foundational API knowledge

    Course overview
    Lesson
    2 min read

    Prep your development environment

    A big worry when starting to make API calls is fear of making a mistake that will affect the data in your Klaviyo account. To freely make API calls without impacting your real customer data, create a test account. Set up your environment so you are ready to practice making API calls.

    Practice with a test account

    Test accounts are great for staging and practicing anything you do not want to affect your live account and data. Creating a test account is free, and you can label it as a test account to keep your learning playground clearly separate from your production account. You can safely use the same login for both accounts, and easily switch between them without fear of your actions in one account impacting the other.

    The following terminology will be used throughout this lesson:

    • Production account: your live Klaviyo account that contains all catalog and customer data
    • Development environment: used by software developers to test out their code

    In this course, our development environments will consist of a Klaviyo test account and associated private API keys.

    Create a test account and private API key

    Follow along with this video to set up your development environment by creating a test account and private API key. These steps will ensure you are ready to start making API calls.

    Private API keys are confidential and allow you to authorize your API calls. You should treat your private API keys like passwords. Never reveal them to anyone else. You can copy private API keys from your Klaviyo account without revealing the keys, as demonstrated in the following video.

    Use your test account throughout this course and any time you would like to try anything in Klaviyo without affecting your production data.

    Get connected and learn more

    Finally, as you begin practicing with Klaviyo APIs, we strongly recommend joining the Developer Group on the Klaviyo Community. The Developer group is aimed at anyone practicing with Klaviyo APIs. Throughout this course and your journey as a Klaviyo Developer, this group will be instrumental in connecting with developers of all experience levels, troubleshooting technical challenges, and getting inspired.

    Reference these guides for more information on setting up your development environment:

    Prep your development environment