Video: How to Make REST Attachment API Requests

[marystromberg]

This video shows how to use the REST API to GET, POST, and DELETE attachments on the ServiceNow platform. It applies to ServiceNow releases starting with Geneva. You will need access to perform the desired attachment operation on the target record and table.

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This video covers:

• 0:30 When to use the REST Attachment API
• 0:48 Documentation
• 1:22 How attachments are stored and accessed in a ServiceNow instance
• 3:11 Retrieve metadata for attachments (GET)
• 4:33 Retrieve attachment content (GET)
• 5:41 Upload an attachment from a binary request (POST)
• 7:27 Upload an attachment from a multipart form (POST)
• 9:03 Retrieve attachment metadata (GET)
• 9:48 Delete an attachment (DELETE)

For more information on REST Attachment API, see ServiceNow product documentation: REST Attachment API.

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[Jeet]

Hi Mary Stromberg,

Thank you for providing such kind of helpful video

I have one requirement in web services....

If I have two attachment for same sys_id and I want to download specific one,

How can we achieve this.

Thanks,

Jeet

[silas1]

Hi Jeet,

If I understand your question correctly, I think you're asking about the scenario where you have multiple attachments for the same target record, and you're only interested in one of those attachments, is that right?  

You can use the "GET /api/now/v1/attachment" endpoint to get all attachment metadata for a given target record by specifying the target table and sys_id via an encoded query in sysparm_query:

In this example, the target table is "incident" and the sys_id of the target record is "85071a1347c12200e0ef563dbb9a71c1".

GET https://<instance>.service-now.com/api/now/v1/attachment?sysparm_query=table_name%3Dincident%5Etable_sys_id%3D85071a1347c12200e0ef563dbb9a71c1

This will give you back metadata for each attachment including a download link, so you can request the one you're interested in.

Hope this helps!

-Silas

(Sample of response):

{
  "result": [
  {
  "size_bytes": "8",
  "file_name": "file1.txt",
  "sys_mod_count": "0",
  "average_image_color": "",
  "image_width": "",
  "sys_updated_on": "2017-03-21 16:30:13",
  "sys_tags": "",
  "table_name": "incident",
  "sys_id": "07253e474fa172001f6eac118110c73a",
  "image_height": "",
  "sys_updated_by": "admin",
  "download_link": "https://<instance>.service-now.com/api/now/v1/attachment/07253e474fa172001f6eac118110c73a/file",
  "content_type": "text/plain",
  "sys_created_on": "2017-03-21 16:30:13",
  "size_compressed": "28",
  "compressed": "true",
  "table_sys_id": "85071a1347c12200e0ef563dbb9a71c1",
  "sys_created_by": "admin"
  },
  {
  "size_bytes": "8",
  "file_name": "file2.txt",
  "sys_mod_count": "0",
  "average_image_color": "",
  "image_width": "",
  "sys_updated_on": "2017-03-21 16:30:18",
  "sys_tags": "",
  "table_name": "incident",
  "sys_id": "9035ba474fa172001f6eac118110c7c3",
  "image_height": "",
  "sys_updated_by": "admin",
  "download_link": "https://<instance>.service-now.com/api/now/v1/attachment/9035ba474fa172001f6eac118110c7c3/file",
  "content_type": "text/plain",
  "sys_created_on": "2017-03-21 16:30:18",
  "size_compressed": "28",
  "compressed": "true",
  "table_sys_id": "85071a1347c12200e0ef563dbb9a71c1",
  "sys_created_by": "admin"
  }
  ]
}