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Integrating with NationBuilder gives you access to an entire community of political campaigns, advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and other groups working to change the world. Our existing integrations help customers enhance their organizing efforts by allowing them to engage with their supporters more effectively. An integration with NationBuilder provides tremendous value to our customers and can help your product reach the hands of influential leaders around the world. The following guide can jumpstart work on your integration:
Create your development sandbox
Your sandbox is a full-featured version of NationBuilder, what we refer to as a nation, with developer API access enabled in the control panel. To request a sandbox please email [email protected] and an account will be created for you. Once it has been created, log into your nation and get access to your control panel.
Import data into your nation
The core of NationBuilder is the people database. The only way to understand how to use the product and what value it offers is to put people in the database. You can download this sample CSV to import into your nation. To import the data, navigate to People > More > Import > Choose the file > Upload CSV file > map the desired fields.
Start the development process
Before you write code, it's probably worth spending time with the API explorer so you understand the different endpoints, requests, and responses they require. You can generate a test token by navigating to your control panel and selecting Settings > Developer > API token. Access tokens do not expire and are only revoked when an admin revokes the token from the control panel.
Setting up OAuth
Before you can make your integration available to customers we require that you integrate using the OAuth protocol. A guide to the OAuth flow can be found in our documentation. To get started, navigate to Settings > Developer > Register app. Here, you can set the name of your application, upload a thumbnail image, create a description of your application, and set the redirect_uri. Once you select, ‘Register,’ we will generate a client ID and a client secret.
When you’re ready to make your app live
When you’re done building your application navigate to Settings > Developer > Your apps > and check the box ‘Make your app public’. Once you save, your app will be sent to NationBuilder for approval. Please send details on how to test your application to [email protected]. Once it has been tested, it will be approved and listed in our app directory.
