# API Parameters

{% hint style="warning" %}
**IMPORTANT!** The `engine` parameter should **always be set to `booking_async`**!
{% endhint %}

The Booking API is a powerful Booking scraping tool, made easy to use. Basically, in order to scrape Booking , all you have to do is send a POST request to our [official endpoint](/amazon-search-api/getting-started/access-the-api.md). 

In order to customise the response from the Booking API, you have to pass certain query parameters and payload to your request. As we discussed in the [*Getting Started*](/booking-search-api/getting-started.md) section, the Booking API supports multiple search types. Because each type has its own particularities, the Booking API has two sets of parameters:

* **General parameters**, applicable to any of the search engines
* **Search type specific parameters**, applicable to specific search engines

We will cover the General parameters here and present the specific ones in the sections dedicated to each search engine.

Here is the full list of **the general parameters**:

<table><thead><tr><th width="259">Parameter</th><th width="109" align="center">Type</th><th width="374">Description</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><code>api_key</code> <br> <mark style="color:red;background-color:red;">Required</mark> </td><td align="center"><code>string</code></td><td>Specify your unique API access key to authenticate with the API. Your <a href="/pages/2wQlb7wrI0bwxlBPNQgq#the-api-key">API access key</a> can be found in your account dashboard.</td></tr><tr><td><code>engine</code><br> <mark style="color:red;background-color:red;">Required</mark> </td><td align="center"><code>string</code></td><td>The engine of the API. Needs to be set to <mark style="color:green;"><strong><code>booking_async</code></strong></mark> for all Booking API requests.</td></tr><tr><td><code>type</code><br> <mark style="color:red;background-color:red;">Required</mark> </td><td align="center"><code>string</code></td><td>The Booking API uses <a href="/pages/HcqB8CCHoQChHBLjp32N">search types</a> in order to return categorised results.</td></tr></tbody></table>


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.webscrapingapi.com/booking-search-api/getting-started/api-parameters.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.