Plaid Challenge 2 - Answer

gistfile1.txt

Hi George,

I'm sorry you're experiencing issues with our documentation and API's. 
Sometimes docs can be a bit confusing. I'd be more than happy to help you with this one.

1. I noticed you're using the 'institutions/search' endpoint in the request. 
This endpoint will give you a JSON response containing details for all institutions that match the query parameters. 
If your goal is to get details on a specified financial institution, like BB&T, then I suggest you use the 
'/institutions/get_by_id' endpoint. The 'id' for BB&T is ins_2. 
 
2. Try adding the 'public_key' field in the parameters. This is a required field for both endpoints. 
To access you public_key, log in to your account and click on the Keys tab under the Account drop-down menu. 
Here's a link to the page: https://dashboard.plaid.com/account/keys

3. Try calling the API by making a POST request instead of a GET request. 

Here's a code example for the get_by_id endpoint:

curl -X POST https://sandbox.plaid.com/institutions/get_by_id \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
  "public_key": "[YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY]",
  "institution_id": "ins_2"
}'

For the search endpoint:

curl -X POST https://sandbox.plaid.com/institutions/search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "query": "BB&T",
    "products": ["auth"],
    "public_key": "[YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY]"
  }'

I hope this was helpful George, please let me know if you have any other questions. I'm happy to help.

Have a great one,
Ary