The Consul HTTP API is a RESTful interface that allows you leverage Consul functionality in your network. This topic provides guidance about the essential API endpoints for different workstreams. Refer to the [HTTP API structure](/api-docs/api-structure) docs to learn how to interact with and authenticate against the Consul HTTP API.
- [`/catalog`](/api-docs/catalog): Register and deregister nodes, services, and health checks.
- [`/health`](/api-docs/health): Query node health when health checks are enabled.
- [`/query`](/api-docs/query): Create and manage prepared queries in Consul. Prepared queries allow you to register a complex service query and send it later.
- [`/coordinate`](/api-docs/coordinate): Query the network coordinates for nodes in the local datacenter and Consul servers in the local datacenter and remote datacenters.
- [`/config`](/api-docs/config): Create, update, delete, and query central configuration entries registered with Consul. Configuration entries define the default behavior of resources in the service mesh.
- [`/agent/connect`](/api-docs/agent/connect): Interact with local agents in the service mesh.
- [`/connect`](/api-docs/connect): Manage service mesh-related operations, including service intentions ([`/connect/intentions`](/api-docs/connect/intentions)) and the service mesh Certificate Authority (CA) ([`/connect/ca`](/api-docs/connect/ca)).
- [`/acl`](/api-docs/acl): Create and manage tokens that authenticate requests and authorize access to resources in the network. We recommend enabling access control lists (ACL) to secure access to the Consul API, UI, and CLI.
- [`/connect/intentions`](/api-docs/connect/intentions): Create and manage service intentions.
- [`/status`](/api-docs/status): Debug your Consul datacenter by returning low-level Raft information about Consul server peers.
- [`/agent/metrics`](/api-docs/agent#view-metrics): Retrieve metrics for the most recent finished intervals. For more information about metrics, refere to [Telemetry](/docs/agent/telemetry).
- [`/operator`](/api-docs/operator): Perform cluster-level tasks, such as interacting with the Raft subsystem or obtaining license information.
- [`/partition`](/api-docs/partition): Create and manage administrative or admin partitions in Consul. Admin partitions are supersets of Consul namespaces that isolate groups of resources to lower operational overhead.
- [`/namespace`](/api-docs/namespace): Create and manage namespaces in Consul. Namespaces isolate groups of resources to lower operational overhead.
- [`/snapshot`](/api-docs/snapshot): Save and restore Consul server state in the event of a disaster.
- [`/txn`](/api-docs/txn): Apply multiple operations, such as updating the catalog and retrieving multiple KV entries, in a single transaction.
- [`/event`](/api-docs/event): Start a custom event that you can use to build scripts and automations.
- [`/kv`](/api-docs/kv): Add, remove, and update metadata stored in the Consul KV store.
- [`/session`](/api-docs/session): Create and manage [sessions](/docs/dynamic-app-config/sessions) in Consul. You can use sessions to build distributed and granular locks to ensure nodes are properly writing to the Consul KV store.