The Mechanical Turk Service accepts a set of parameters in the request common to every operation. Each required parameter must be included in a request for the request to be successful.
Parameters common to all operations are explained here. For more information about the parameters for a specific operation, see the description of the operation elsewhere in this API reference.
The following parameters may be included in every request to the Mechanical Turk Service. Required parameters must be included with each request for the request to succeed.
| Name | Description | Type | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWSAccessKeyId |
The Requester's Access Key ID. Every call to an AWS web service must include an Access Key ID, a unique identifier that corresponds to an Secret Access Key and an Amazon.com account. This identifies the application using the service for billing, metering, and tracking purposes. For the Mechanical Turk Service, the Access Key ID must be associated with the Requester's Amazon.com account. This account will be used to pay for HITs, and to identify the Requester on the web site. The Requester can sign in to the Requester Console (http://requester.mturk.amazon.com/) with this account to fund the account and track activity. To get an Access Key ID and an Secret Access Key, visit the Amazon Web Services web site at http://aws.amazon.com/mturk. Be sure to log in with your Requester account e-mail and password. |
Required |
A valid Access Key ID |
| Service |
For REST requests, the name of the Amazon Web Services service being called. For the Mechanical Turk Service, this name is always AWSMechanicalTurkRequester. For SOAP requests, the name of the service is part of the SOAP entry point, and does not need to be specified in the request. |
Required |
AWSMechanicalTurkRequester |
| Operation |
For REST requests, the name of the operation being called. For example, to call the CreateHIT operation, specify an Operation parameter of CreateHIT. For your convenience, the description of this parameter is repeated for each operation in this API reference. For SOAP requests, the operation name is part of the SOAP message structure provided by your SOAP toolkit, and is not part of the request. |
Required |
An operation name |
| Signature |
The signature for this request, an encrypted string calculated from elements of the request and the AWS access key that corresponds to your AWS Access Key ID. For information on how to calculate a Signature, see Request Authentication. |
Required |
A signature string that matches this request |
| Timestamp |
The current time on your system. This value is included to validate against the Signature. It is not used for any other purpose. |
Required |
A dateTime in the Coordinated Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time) time zone, such as 2005-01-31T23:59:59Z |
| ResponseGroup |
A list of response groups, delimited by commas. Response groups specify what data is returned by the service for an operation, to control the volume and content of the response. Most operations in the Mechancial Turk Service use two possible response groups: Minimal and Request. Minimal provides the results of the operation call. Request echos the content of the original request. By default, the service will return data for just the Minimal response group. Operations that return a HIT data structure have additional response groups, and different defaults. See the HIT data structure for more information. For example, to request that the Request response group be included in the response in addition to Minimal, specify a ResponseGroup of: Minimal,Request |
Optional |
A list of response groups, delimited by commas. |
| Version |
For REST requests, specifies what version of the API to use. For information about API versioning, see WSDL and Schema Locations. If not specified, the latest version of the service API will be used. |
Optional |
The version of the service API to use |
| Validate |
If specified, instructs the service to not perform the operation, and only return information about whether or not the request is valid. If not specified, the service will execute the requested operation. |
Optional |
true. (To execute the operation, omit the Validate parameter.) |
| Credential |
This parameter is reserved for future use. It appears in the Mechanical Turk Service schema for purposes internal to the service. You do not need to specify this parameter in your requests. |
Unused |
(Reserved for future use.) |