COMPOSITION OF A CALL

The following call retrieves the first year of monthly settle prices for FRED GDP time-series data (FRED/GDP), which you can find on Quandl here, in CSV format:

curl "https://www.quandl.com/api/v3/datasets/FRED/GDP.csv?collapse=annual&rows=6&order=asc&column_index=1&api_key=YOURAPIKEY"

We can break down this request as follows:

URL COMPONENT	EXPLANATION
`https://www.quandl.com/api/v3/datasets/FRED/GDP.csv`	This portion of the call queries the `FRED/GDP` time-series and returns the data in CSV format.
`collapse=annual`	Converts the series to annual.
`rows=6`	This truncates the results to include only the first six rows of data.
`order=asc`	This arranges the dates in ascending order.
`column_index=1`	This parameter allows users to define just a single column to return, in this case column 1 (Value).
`api_key=YOURAPIKEY`	This part of the call authenticates you as a Quandl user. Replace the placeholder text `<YOURAPIKEY>` with your personal API Key.

The following is the output for our example call:

DATE,VALUE
1947-12-31,260.3
1948-12-31,280.7
1949-12-31,271
1950-12-31,320.3
1951-12-31,356.6
1952-12-31,381.2

For a complete list of time-series parameters, click here.