API for Beginners

Put simply, an API is a formal line of communication between two programs. A REST API is one that utilizes inherent features of the Web to enable communication between a client and a server. It's important to note that APIs aren't designed to be exposed to you, the end user, except through intermediary programs. Remember this when you're experimenting directly with the API; otherwise you may get frustrated.

Omeka's REST API provides an endpoint against which you can query, create, update, and delete Omeka resources. Your Omeka endpoint is the URL to your Omeka website followed by /api, like this:

http://yourdomain.com/api

You can see which resources are available by appending /resources?pretty_print to your endpoint, like this:

http://yourdomain.com/api/resources?pretty_print

Here you are getting the /resources resource, and telling the API to return a nicely formatted JSON object containing all the resources that are available and other information about them.