Paligo API

Paligo REST API

Reference for integrating with the Paligo CCMS REST API (v2). Paligo stores structured documentation as reusable components (topics) in a DocBook 5.x–based XML format. The API covers content (documents, folders, forks), assets (images), discovery (search), ingestion (imports), publishing (productions, publish settings, outputs), localization (translation export/import), metadata (taxonomies, variables), and administration (groups, users, assignments). The flagship workflow is the content round trip: enumerate content, pull topic XML, edit it, validate, and push it back.

For any endpoint, object shape, query parameter, or enum, references/endpoints.md is the complete catalog of every resource the API exposes — start there when the task isn't a content edit (e.g. publishing, translations, users, taxonomies, variables, images).

Base URL and Authentication

https://{instance}.paligoapp.com/api/v2

{instance} is the customer's Paligo instance name. Authentication is HTTP Basic: username:apikey Base64-encoded. The API key is generated per-user in Paligo (user settings → API). The user account must have admin privileges.

curl -u "user@example.com:API_KEY" "https://example.paligoapp.com/api/v2/documents/123"

All requests/responses are JSON. Timestamps are Unix epoch integers.

Core Concepts

The Round-Trip Workflow (pull → edit → validate → push)

This is the core workflow. Full detail and code in references/workflows.md.

1. Walk the tree — enumerate folders (GET /folders), list documents per folder (GET /documents?parent=), or walk a publication's structure via GET /forks?parent=. A folder's children mixes subfolders and documents — recurse only type == "folder". For a full inventory snapshot, run scripts/walk_paligo.py (paced, fault-tolerant; writes tree + flat doc list + readable outline).
2. Pull — GET /documents/{id}; save the original content XML and modified_at verbatim (needed for validation and conflict detection).
3. Pre-flight checks — refuse to edit if checkout is true (someone else is editing), release_status is STATUS_RELEASED (locked; needs a new version) or STATUS_IN_TRANSLATION (edits will diverge from in-flight translation). If languages has entries, warn: text edits invalidate existing translations for changed segments.
4. Edit — operate on the XML tree, never on the string. Never add, remove, or modify xinfo:* attributes or xml:id/id attributes — these are Paligo-managed identifiers binding elements to reuse and translation memory. See references/xml-format.md for the format and editing rules.
5. Validate — run scripts/validate_paligo_xml.py compare original.xml edited.xml to verify well-formedness and that all Paligo identifiers survived the edit. See Validation below.
6. Push — re-check modified_at hasn't changed (no ETags/If-Match exist; this is the only conflict detection available), then PUT /documents/{id} with {"content": "<edited xml>"}.

Before the first real edit on any instance, run a no-op round trip on a throwaway topic: GET → PUT the content back unchanged → GET again → confirm the XML is semantically identical. This verifies the instance round-trips cleanly before touching real content.

Validation

There is no documented server-side schema validation on PUT — malformed pushes are your problem. Validate locally before every push:

# Well-formedness only
python3 scripts/validate_paligo_xml.py check edited.xml

# Full pre-push validation: well-formedness + ID/structure preservation vs the original
python3 scripts/validate_paligo_xml.py compare original.xml edited.xml

The compare mode enforces the invariants that matter to Paligo: root element and namespaces unchanged, every xml:id/id from the original still present exactly once, every xinfo:* attribute preserved with its original value on the same element. Exit code 0 = safe to push.

For deeper structural validation, Paligo XML is close to DocBook 5.x — the DocBook RELAX NG schema can catch invalid nesting, but expect false positives on Paligo extensions (xinfo:* attributes, internal namespaces). Treat DocBook RNG validation as advisory, ID preservation as mandatory.

Versioning, Status, and Translations — Rules That Bite

• Released content is locked. Editing requires moving the document back to work in progress, which creates a new version in Paligo. Don't silently flip release_status on released content — surface it to the user.
• Releasing auto-approves translations. Setting STATUS_RELEASED approves completed translations in all languages.
• Translations align at the element level via xinfo:text attributes. Editing a paragraph's text marks that segment as needing re-translation (expected and visible). Removing or changing its xinfo:text attribute orphans the existing translation entirely (silent data loss). This is why the validator treats xinfo:* as immutable.
• No optimistic locking. The API has no ETags. Use checkout as an advisory lock and compare modified_at before PUT.
• Write rate limits are low (document updates 10/min Business, 20/min Enterprise; reads 50/250 per minute) and production/import/translation creates are 1/min on Business — never loop those POSTs. Throttle proactively (pacing helper in workflows.md), honor Retry-After on 429, and give the user a time estimate before bulk jobs (full table and per-1,000-topic budgets in endpoints.md → Rate limits).

Reference Files

• references/endpoints.md — Complete endpoint catalog for the entire API: documents, folders, forks, images, search, imports, outputs, productions, publish settings, translation export/import, taxonomies, variables (sets/variants/variables/values), groups, users, assignments, plus pagination, rate limits, and error handling. Opens with a resource map of every path and verb.
• references/xml-format.md — Paligo XML format: DocBook element vocabulary, xinfo:* attributes, cross-references, reuse mechanics, editing rules.
• references/workflows.md — Worked recipes: tree walking, full-library export, round-trip editing with conflict handling, publication traversal, translation-aware editing, triggering publishes.

Disclaimer

This skill is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Paligo. It references publicly available API documentation for educational and integration purposes. The information may be outdated or incomplete. Always refer to the official Paligo documentation (https://api.paligo.net) for the most current API specifications.