The fields and optional_fields Query Parameters

Every request to the RIPE Atlas APIs will always return the fields that constitute the unique identifier for that particular object. Generally that will be id and type. Some optional fields can also be added to the request. Every other field can be explicitly removed.

The query parameters that allow this are the fields and the optional_fields parameters.

fields

Let's start with an example: https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/143/?fields=first_connected,status_since will return only the fields first_connected and status_since of the probe with ID 143.

GET /api/v2/probes/143/?fields=first_connected,status_since

Using an empty fields= query parameter only returns the id and type parameter for each object.

optional_fields

Using the optional_fields query parameter with a comma-separated list of field names means these fields will be appended to every requested object, next to the fields that are already there by default.

For example, the request https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/2000000/ will not, by default, return the fields participation_requests and probes, mainly because these fields require extra calls to the back-end database and contain information that is not obviously needed. If you add optional_fields=participation_requests,probes as a query parameter, however, you will see these two extra fields:

GET /api/v2/measurements/2000000/?optional_fields=participation_requests,probes