# How-to build your API requests In this guide, we’ll be covering how to build API requests with our [football API 2.0](https://sportmonks.com/football-api/). The example API request will be focused on getting all the football matches on a certain date by using the [**fixtures by date endpoint**](https://football-postman.sportmonks.com/#3ea72840-e3b7-48fe-9034-3a2132885ce8). Fixtures is the terminology used for matches. We’ll be working with a free plan, so we only have access to the **Danish Superliga** (id: 271) and the **Scottish Premiership** (id: 501). ## Step 1: Get the base URL The first thing we need to have is our base URL and our API token. {% tabs %} {% tab title="Base URL" %} ```javascript https://soccer.sportmonks.com/api/v2.0/?api_token={API_TOKEN} ``` {% endtab %} {% endtabs %} ## Step 2: Choose and add the endpoint Next, we need to add an endpoint to the base URL. As stated earlier, for this example we want to get all of the fixtures on a certain date. The endpoint for that is called [**fixtures by date**](https://football-postman.sportmonks.com/#3ea72840-e3b7-48fe-9034-3a2132885ce8)**.** This will transform our URL into: ```javascript https://soccer.sportmonks.com/api/v2.0/fixtures/date/{Date}?api_token={API_TOKEN} ``` The date has to be in the format of YYYY-MM-DD. In this example, we’ll take the date of 2020-09-26. ```javascript https://soccer.sportmonks.com/api/v2.0/fixtures/date/2020-09-26?api_token={API_TOKEN} ``` ## Step 3: Evaluate the response The football API 2.0 will return a ton of information, but the main takeaway is that there are various ids about the fixture, league, season, stage, etc. Other than that, there is also score, time, coaches and standings. Below is a snippet of the output. ```javascript { "data": [ { "id": 16475331, "league_id": 501, "season_id": 17141, "stage_id": 77447501, "round_id": 194976, "group_id": null, "aggregate_id": null, "venue_id": 14509, "referee_id": 15815, "localteam_id": 338, "visitorteam_id": 282, "winner_team_id": null, ``` {% hint style="info" %} You can check out our [**fixtures & livescores tutorials**](/v2/tutorials/schedule-fixtures-and-livescores.md) if you want more detailed information. {% endhint %} ## Step 4: Enrichment This guide would be pretty short if we were to end here. That’s why we’ll now be [**enriching**](/v2/tutorials/enriching-your-response.md) our API request with includes. Here is the URL we used previously again. ```javascript https://soccer.sportmonks.com/api/v2.0/fixtures/date/2020-09-26?api_token={API_TOKEN} ``` We might be interested in the teams that will be playing against each other. We can then add the following part to our request: `&includes=localTeam,visitorTeam`. Now our URL will be: ```javascript https://soccer.sportmonks.com/api/v2.0/fixtures/date/2020-09-26?api_token={API_TOKEN}&include=localTeam,visitorTeam ``` ## Step 5: Re-evaluate response Now we have more information about the local and visitor teams. The local team is called Hamilton Academical, with team id 338 and the visitor team is called Dundee United with team id 282. ```javascript "localTeam": { "data": { "id": 338, "legacy_id": 693, "name": "Hamilton Academical", "short_code": "HMA", "twitter": null, "country_id": 1161, "national_team": false, "founded": 1874, "logo_path": "https://cdn.sportmonks.com/images//soccer/teams/18/338.png", "venue_id": 288196, "current_season_id": 17141 } }, "visitorTeam": { "data": { "id": 282, "legacy_id": 692, "name": "Dundee United", "short_code": "DUD", "twitter": null, "country_id": 1161, "national_team": false, "founded": 1909, "logo_path": "https://cdn.sportmonks.com/images//soccer/teams/26/282.png", "venue_id": 8947, "current_season_id": 17141 } ``` {% hint style="info" %} You can check out our [**includes tutorial**](/v2/tutorials/enriching-your-response/includes.md) if you want more detailed information. {% endhint %} ## Step 6: Go even further beyond We can go even further beyond, by using [**nested includes**](/v2/tutorials/enriching-your-response/nested-includes.md). Let’s say we would like to know more about the coach of the visitor team. We simply add`.coach`to visitorTeam. The URL then becomes this: ```javascript https://soccer.sportmonks.com/api/v2.0/fixtures/date/2020-09-26?api_token={API_TOKEN}&include=localTeam,visitorTeam.coach ``` ```javascript "visitorTeam": { "data": { "id": 282, "legacy_id": 692, "name": "Dundee United", "short_code": "DUD", "twitter": null, "country_id": 1161, "national_team": false, "founded": 1909, "logo_path": "https://cdn.sportmonks.com/images//soccer/teams/26/282.png", "venue_id": 8947, "current_season_id": 17141, "coach": { "data": { "coach_id": 896498, "team_id": 201, "country_id": 1161, "common_name": "M. Mellon", "fullname": "Micky Mellon", "firstname": "Micky", "lastname": "Mellon", "nationality": "Scotland", "birthdate": "18/03/1972", "birthcountry": "Scotland", "birthplace": "Paisley", "image_path": "https://cdn.sportmonks.com/images/soccer/players/18/896498.png" } ``` Now, we can see that the coach of the visitor team is called Micky Mellon with coach id 896498. {% hint style="info" %} You can check out our [**nested** i**ncludes tutorial** ](/v2/tutorials/enriching-your-response/nested-includes.md)if you want more detailed information. {% endhint %} See how flexible the API requests and responses can be? You request exactly what you need and the API will return exactly that. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.sportmonks.com/v2/how-to-guides/get-started/how-to-build-your-api-requests.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.