# Accessing Astera's Server APIs Through a Third Party Tool

Astera provides you with the flexibility to execute your jobs through a third-party tool, without using the Astera client. Let’s learn how to achieve this in the article below.

## **Use Case**

In this use case, we have our Astera client on a local machine and a server installed on a virtual machine. Instead of using the Astera client, we will use Postman as a third-party tool to send REST requests to the server in order to execute the job.

## **Workflow in Astera**

The workflow document in Astera consists of a *Variables* object, a *FileTransferTask* object, and a *RunDataflow* object.

We will pass the name of the file that we want to download and process to the *FileTransferTask* from the *Variables* object. The *Variables* object takes an input from the REST call sent through Postman and passes it to FTP to download the file with that name. We then pass the file path of the downloaded file to the *RunDataflow* object.

![](/files/UGq565axNpAbkfi4owLx)

In the following section, we will cover a step-by-step overview of how you can achieve this.

## **How to Execute a Job Using Postman**

1. We will make the first API call for logging into the Astera server to generate an access token. Provide the following credentials in the request body and click on *Send*.
   * *User*: admin
   * *Password*: Admin123
   * *RememberMe*: 1

![](/files/MzC3ocb60hWZCN4E7SGi)

The Astera server will provide you with an access token in response.

![](/files/DRIZujH83f79pujZjDcM)

2. We will send the path of the file that we want to download from FTP, in the form of a string, to the *Variables* object.

![](/files/ZOywozQL07E8QCPAfF3k)

In the parameters:

* *ActionName*: Variables

Name of the object present inside the workflow to which the name of the file will be passed

* *Parameters*: sourceFilePath

The value of the input variable field inside the workflow

* *Value*: \[file path of the file that you want to download]

The value of the input variable field inside the workflow

As soon as you send this API request, Astera will provide you with a *jobID* that you can use to get the job status.

![](/files/JitTrnlXed5FqLeid05P)

3. We will make a GET call to fetch the job’s status by providing the job ID.

![](/files/HNBn8MUMF5u1D3KxH5xN)

This is what Astera's response would look like.

![](/files/MGJdigQzFG13HeMMMTYy)

This concludes accessing Astera's server APIs through a third-party tool.


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