Developer Platform Overview

Hello there! 👋 Welcome to the Flock Developer Platform.

The place where safety meets software.

Flock Safety’s mission is to build thriving communities through a combination of technology, people, and policy. We believe that technology is a positive force - and we know we can't build it all alone. That's where you come in.

Whether you are a developer at a startup, an engineer at a large enterprise, or a partner building the next great public safety tool, our APIs allow you to build bidirectional Flock Apps that help our mutual customers make the world a safer place.

What is a Flock App?

A Flock app is the bridge between your code and the Flock ecosystem. It's a tool or an integration that extends the functionality of Flock Safety products; it adds new features, integrates with external services, or enhances the user experience. With the Flock developer platform, individual and enterprise developers can create apps that integrate directly with the products and tools customers already use, whether that's an third party sensor, connecting to a VMS, managing lists of vehicles of interest and cases, or sending automated alerts. It allows you to:

1. Extend the Flock Experience: Bring data from your applications or third-party sensors into Flock to provide added-value experiences for mutual customers.
2. Build Seamless Workflows: Connect Flock sensors into your product experiences for mutual customers, streamlining operations and improving safety outcomes.

Prefer to learn by doing?
If you want to skip the theory and start coding immediately, head straight to the Quickstart Guide. If you just need to get an access token to start calling Web API methods, the first steps of that guide will get you there in minutes.

Two Ways to Build

To keep things simple, we support two primary patterns for building Flock Apps:

1. Bring Data In

Make your hardware and data visible to the thousands of agencies and enterprises using Flock's software experiences. For example:

• Sensor Integration: Have a sensor? Register it as a Device so users can interact with it alongside their existing Flock hardware.
• Real-Time Context: Push events, alarms, or live location telemetry into Flock so end-users have the full picture when it matters most.
• Augment Your Device Capabilities with Flock AI: Use the Vehicle Detection API to run vehicle images from your cameras through Flock's best-in-class AI - turning your cameras into intelligence nodes in the Flock network for mutual customers.

2. Connect Flock customer data to your application.

Access data on-demand to streamline operations within your own application. For example:

• Asset Visibility: Map Flock devices within your system's UI to give users immediate context and deep links back to the Flock product experience for seamless workflows.
• Search & Investigate: Securely query vehicle detections made by the customer's Flock LPR devices.
• Act in Real-Time: Subscribe to events from our Events API to trigger instant workflows in your system - such triggering a notification or automating a workflow when a vehicle of interest is detected by a Flock sensor.

A Managed Ecosystem

We operate a managed ecosystem. Access to the Flock Developer Platform is controlled, meaning we partner with developers whose Flock Apps support the bona fide safety goals of our mutual customers.

The Rules of the Road

Building for public safety comes with responsibility. By building a Flock App, you agree to the standards found in our API and Integrations Terms:

• Auditability: Tell us why. Endpoints like vehicle detection search require a reason for queries, so customers can audit exactly how and why their data is being accessed and by whom.
• Data Stewardship: Our APIs are designed for real-time, on-demand workflows. To ensure responsible data handling, we require apps to fetch only the specific data needed for the task at hand and strictly prohibit bulk scraping or database replication.

How to use these docs

This documentation is broken down into two categories:

• Guides: These are more lengthy explanations of a concept within a Flock app, i.e. how to distribute your Flock app, how to implement OAuth, etc. You are here.
• Reference: Have you landed here looking for reference documentation? We admire a straight-shooter. Direct your attention to the Reference section for referential material on API methods, payload examples, etc.

What's next?

Every integration journey is unique. You might want to jump straight into distributing your app to mutual customers, explore how to get listed on the Flock in-app Marketplace, or deep dive into User-Level Authentication for granular security.

Whatever path you choose, keep the mission in focus: empowering our users to build safer communities. We are here to help you get there efficiently and securely.