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Overview

Last updated 8/09/2025

The Five API provides REST-style endpoints for accessing and updating data within your Five application database.

Creating a URL that uses a process allows you to fully customize a public URL that can be used in the browser, or a private URL when authorization has been applied that can be used in a third-party platform such as Postman to be processed with code. Your code will need to be attached to the Do Run event on your process. The Do Run event is a server (backend) event and when the data has been submitted in Five, your URL created in Five will be used to retrieve the data, effectively getting the data from your database in Five.

To retrieve data via a URL from your database in Five, you will need to perform the following steps:

  • Create a function, in the function you will need to use Five's
    executeQuery()
     function to get the data from your database
  • Create a process and attach your function to the Do Run event
  • Create a URL and reference your process

Base URLs​

The examples below are using the default instance created by Five.

URL and Data Flow​

When the URL has been sent a request with the

action
keyword in the published URL, Five will read the URL encoded form values, either as
GET
parameters, or in the body of the
POST
request and assign these values to the
parameters
 property on the
Five
object. In your function attached to the process, you can now use these values supplied to perform actions like updating database values etc.

When you have completed what you need to do, simply return

five.success
or
five.createError
 to indicate to the calling application the result of your function.

External URL Data Access Application​

note
If you would like to have the External URL Data Access application to use as a reference, please download ExternalURLTrain.fdf.

Click here to know how to import this file into Five.

info

If you are importing the completed ExternalURLTrain.fdf you will need to use the following credentials to log into the application.

The admin login will give you full access to the application.

Username: admin Password: Demo123!


The External URL Data Access application is a multiuser application created in Five and will be used to demonstrate:

  • How to retrieve data from Five using a public URL
  • How to add an authorization token to secure your data
  • Optionally, how to test the returned results in Five

Tables​

The application has the following three tables:

The iUser table that Five adds when creating a multiuser application.

The Customer table which has the following fields:

  • CustomerKey
  • FirstName
  • LastName
  • Phone

The Address table which has the following fields:

  • AddressKey
  • CustomerKey
  • Type
  • Number
  • Street
  • Suburb
  • PostCode
External URL Data Access database model
Figure 1 - External URL Data Access database model

Forms and Menus​

Three forms are in the application, the Users form that Five adds, the Customers form, and the Addresses form, each of these forms reference their respective data source.
Form records
Figure 2 - Form records

The Addresses form does not have a menu item as it is a list page on the Customers form.
Addresses list page
Figure 3 - Addresses list page

The Users form has a menu item that Five adds, and the Customers form has a menu item too.
Menu records
Figure 4 - Menu records

Roles​

When you create a multiuser application, Five creates a public role which is designed to be used with URLs. You will need to ensure you have the correct permissions to have access to the data sources associated with the URL. For this example, the read permission will be set as the default table permissions, however, it could just be set for the Customer table.
Public role
Figure 5 - Public role

Data in External URL Data Access Application​

The External URL Data Access application has a number of customer records.
note
If you have built the application yourself, you will need to add some customer data to see the results retrieved as we continue on.

Customer records
Figure 6 - Customer records

Clicking the Address tab will show the addresses associated with the customer.
Address records
Figure 7 - Address records